What About This ******* Weather?

We should have a roll call on Wednesday morning to see how many forum members are still with us.

 

So when did we switch from leaving it up to people to find information relevant to them and their life to pushing it out to everyone but expecting anyone unaffected to just ignore it? I'd say there's a high probability the January golfer is very likely to already be paying very close attention to the weather forecast (or else he or she is frankly an oddball). Likewise Mrs Miggins in her little cottage in No Drains Lane. We don't need a yellow weather warning covering millions of people to ensure their safety from entirely predictable winter weather.

I'm not angry at all, but I do think it has the opposite effect to the one which the (well meaning) people who come up with this stuff intend. I'm very dubious about the capacity of the general public to assimilate risk-based briefings about anything frankly.

But do you really think people who ignore or otherwise don't bother with the weather forecast are likely to do something different as a result of a warning like this? I suspect those of us who produce or work with risk assessments professionally are inclined to overestimate their usefulness when applied to daily life by the public at large.

 

Covid showed that plenty of people can assimilate risk based briefings.

You seem to have split the Country into two, those who can and those who don’t. Neither appear inconvenienced by more nuanced weather reporting/warnings nor is there any evidence of a group who is prone to a deleterious ‘cry-wolf’ effect.

 

I'm not sure the behaviours Covid exposed on all sides of the debate are something we'd want to hold up as a model for rolling out risk-based briefings to the general public on a wider basis!

 

A limited number, yes. I'm a bit of a weather nut but as an example, up until Sunday eve my mother was expecting her niece to travel from London by tube to Watford to see her tomorrow. Heard about the weather warnings and told her to come Thursday instead. I'm sure the warnings are being over-repeated, but "as a thing" I do think that weather warnings do have an impact and people do notice them when they may not notice if just dealt with as part of the normal weather forecast, which they may not bother watching.

 

Most people did just fine though. There are always idiots and they are often noisy beyond their real influence.

 

I’m not meaning this to imply that the coming two days aren’t likely to be very serious for many people, or that temperatures aren’t hotter now than during our childhoods BUT

One big difference between then and now is the advent of both rolling news and social media.

1976 is often sited. It was a freak summer and actually caused excess deaths to rise by 20%. But my memories of it as a child are of an era where we had only three tv channels, three news bulletins a day, no internet obviously, only a newspaper my parents took. If 1976 was lived in today’s society, the whole heatwave summer would have been covered 24 hours a day on tv, and social media would have been full of it endlessly too.

I can’t quite decide whether we were better off back then with an ‘ignorance is bliss’ more laid-back attitude (although I still look back and shudder that we never knew about the benefits of suncream as teenagers out playing in the sun or all day) or if we are better off these days with alerts and warnings everywhere, better information for sure but in a world where it’s nearly impossible to escape from it.

 

It's boring being reminded time and time again and I'm sure it is a bit OTT in 2022, but 1/ it is going to be 2 days of highest ever recorded temp in the UK, and 2/ how many lives back in 1976 could have been saved had wall 2 wall TV been warning about the risks ?

 

You may be joking but you do realise that 4pm will be about the hottest part of the day ? Hotter than 12pm.

 

Some annoying scraping and banging going on on scaffolding in my street. I'm hoping they'll have the sense to stop soon as working in this heat isn't safe (and one of them isn't wearing a hat!).

Quite reasonably the big team meeting tomorrow is being conducted on Teams - normally everyone would be expected to come into the office. Predicted to plunge to a "cool" 28 C on Wednesday, hoping there'll be a big thunderstorm!

 

Heat increases throughout the day and only starts to taper off really at about 4-5. The sun is lower after 12, but still hot and the heat that has been absorbed by the land then continues to heat the air.

 

Good points

And conversely how many people back then avoided anxiety-driven medical issues because they weren’t constantly exposed to warnings and daily doom?

 

Common sense when you think about it, not just the position of the sun but also the time the sun takes to warm up the earth.

 

Reading 34.8° right now under the dappled sunshine of a fir tree in North Herts…that’ll do, stop ✋

 

Zoiks. We are quite a way from the hottest part of the day.

Here, the cats are lolling around on the grass like a pride of Lions, albeit with collars on.

 

Scottish temperature record of 19 C with light drizzle, set to be beaten.

 

My daughter has much more interesting thermometer on her patio….'blood hot

 

26 degrees in my lounge atm with curtains drawn and windows and doors closed other than skylight to allow any heat to rise up and out of house if hotter than outside air....

 

26.5 now indoors. Just went outside to fill up the bird feeders. **** it's hot. Surprised there was no advance warning.

 

Brilliant.

 

When I lived in Australia I was on a film shoot in the Adelaide interior, I met a mad Aussie loner type who lived in a metal caravan in temps of high 40s. He said he was hoping it got hotter so he could cook food inside his caravan without switching the oven on.

 

Mass death due to sunburn in the 20 minutes that the sun breaks free from the clouds.

 

My office air con is kaput. Currently 34.3 degrees. No choice as we have important stuff to test.
When I go for a run in the morning I watch my heart rate go down during the day. Today it's steadily going up!

 

Kew Gardens has reached 37.5. Is this the Greenhouse Effect we hear about?

 

Christ on a bike, what are you going to do?

 

Am I winning?

 

Sounds a bit fishy to me lol

 

No need to carp on about it etc.

 

I think the aquarium is winning with that advertising

 

Hitting 32 in the midlands in Ireland. Positively cold in comparison to you guys! Be cool and safe.