Is there lightning near you?

Butterfield wrote:So, basically just a handful of places in the south east were affected by thunderstorms. For days the weather forecasts had been warning of devastating country-wide thunderstorms, and yet it came to not very much. Is there any point in weather forecasts?!

Definite point in the forecast. No point in a person standing there misinterpreting what it shows. They do it all the time.

It will show 18 or 19 over Cornwall/Devon, 19 over West Wales and Liverpool, and 25 over London. A range of 21-22-23-24's across the rest of England and eastern/central Scotland. And a 16 or 17 over each of the Western Isles and Orkney.

Invariably with a cheery tone and sweeping wave of an arm - for example - every summer throughout summer, the nation is informed that tomorrow its going to be 'mid to high twenties across the south and perhaps touching twenty or even twenty one in some spots in the north while struggling to reach the high teens across Scotland', while the map right behind the overpaid grinning idiot shows its going to be 19 in the south west and 22 in Edinburgh.

You get the impression they couldn't read a map to save their lives.

The other one that annoys me is when it'll have - for example - 26. And they'll gesture towards it while saying 'so 28 or even 29 possible in the afternoon'. So put 28 then, or admit you're simply making conversation about your hopes and dreams for your own day off.

This is true*, but only a few hardy souls live there. It would usually be more accurate to say 'low twenties across the parts of Scotland most people live in, as even the map right behind me displays'. And if its below 20 in Devon and Cornwall, and even marked on the map as such, its never accurate to say 'mid to high twenties across the south', but they always do. If they mean the south east, say the south east, because 'the south' is a much wider area.

Having gone to university in Bristol, and with a best friend from Glasgow, I've found the great weather divide in Britain isnt actually north v south which is a tyranny of small differences (on an average summer day - not the handful of 30+ exceptions - its the difference between both bone dry if all down the east coast from top to bottom, and one end being about 24c and the other end about 21c).

The real divide is east west - where the difference is everything across there is sopping wet for at least 2 in every 3 days, theres no point in gardening because the regrowth is so fast everything always looks untidy anyway, all the buildings are covered in moss and ferns, and if there werent rain clouds coming in again it might be 25c but it almost certainly wont be - if you get lucky and is today, it won't be tomorrow.

I dont know how they cope. I almost didn't. My journey with anti depressants began in Bristol. Pavements and garden walls were covered in green mossy slime. You look out and oh great shock, its raining again. If it's not raining the roads are still drying off from the last downpour. Never again for me. North or south, west coast is always out, out, out. Unliveable. My friend moved to the Med. When i was clearing out my fathers house in Devon, the damp which required fixing before it could be sold was unreal - his equally unkempt property in Sussex was damp free.

*almost true - the warmest January day in Britain was practically Orcadian, very far up in the Highlands - 20c. The warmest before that, now the second warmest, coincided with a trip of mine to Royal Deeside in 2003 - 19c. The growing season on those western isles is almost shockingly long and exotic - they might not have a summer by our standards, but they dont really have a winter either, so surprisingly tender things can live right through the year outdoors, as long as they have the thirst to cope. They're usually reliably snow free in years when even the south east is blanketed.