Thunderstorm Barry? Why the Met Office is encouraging the public to #nameourstorms
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Version 0 of 1. Age: Brand new! Appearance: Next storm time! What’s going on? Don’t you mean #what’sgoingon? Just tell me. The Met Office is letting us name our storms from now on! What? We’re all invited to submit names for putative bouts of severe weather. The Met Office, together with Irish national forecaster Met Éireann, will compile a list, arrange it alphabetically and then alternate between male and female as storms, gales and the like crop up. Like they do in America? Exactly! Dear God, will the cultural cringe never end? How much lower can we bow and scrape? Oh, c’mon – it’ll be fun! Storms called Brian! Hurricanes Ena and Betty! Terrible Downpour Elaine! Bit Chilly Out Ben! Why is the Met Office doing this? It says that making names up on the hoof has been causing confusion among agencies that really need to know what’s going on, where, the gale forces and the amount of precipitation involved. And also to avoid situations like Hurricane Bawbag. What was the Hurricane Bawbag situation? That was when the Scottish people collectively decided to christen the storm that raged across their fair land with their ancient dialect word for scrotum and disseminated it across Twitter and all other social media. That’s brilliant. A singular expression of a singular culture and the distilled essence of an entire nation’s attitude and sense of humour. No, it was vulgar and meteorologically unsound. So from now on, everything’s got to come from a sanitised, pre-approved list? Chosen by the great British public! It’s still interactive and cool and everything! Not as chosen, cool or interactive as coming up with something like Hurricane Bawbag, though. No, but … but … Tell me, do you think this initiative has anything to do with the Met Office wanting to improve its standing in the popular mind since it lost its lucrative contract with the BBC? No executive agency of the Ministry of Defence with such an honourable history, rooted in Britain’s proud naval traditions, could possibly be so needy. Do say: “Clouds are gathering. They look like a ‘Ptolemy’ to me.” Don’t say: “Earlier on today, a woman rang and said she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way … Don’t worry, there isn’t!” Especially if you’re Michael Fish on 15 October 1987. |