Our once-mild climate is increasingly extreme – and how we talk about it is now another front in the culture wars In this fragmented but supposedly mild country, watching and talking about the weather forecast is meant to be a reassuring, unifying activity. Collectively, we have created and maintained a national climate narrative of small disappointments and pleasures. The first weather forecaster to appear on British TV, George Cowling, made his debut on the BBC in January 1954, predicting that “tomorrow would be rather windy”, but “a good day to hang out the washing”. For most of the 72 years since, such brief, carefully calibrated broadcasts have provided people from Aberdeen to Penzance with practical information, small talk and minor grumbles about essentially the same situation: living in a country where the weather is constantly changing, in a paradoxically unchanging way. Yet like the traditional British climate, that common weather culture may now be evaporating. “Met Office c
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Weather forecasts once gave Britons something safe to chat about. Not any more | Andy Beckett
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