Weather Magazine

Always take the weather with you Anita Roy The land around them is rich, and there is that likes the certainties of life and is averse plenty of rain and warmth to make things to change, (Jefferson, 2011). The regularity Somerset, UK grow all the year round… As one writer of the forecast, the hypnotic, almost nurs- humorously puts it, ‘the natives lie flat on ery-rhyme like incantation of ‘Dogger, Walking ’round the room singing Stormy their backs and the bananas drop into Fisher, German Bight’ and the unbroken Weather their mouths’. So, like all spoiled children, audio link through the years and back to At fifty-seven Mount Pleasant Street they cannot do anything for themselves. our childhoods – and even further back to Well it’s the same room, but everything’s Since they do not need to work or plan for our parents’ childhoods and perhaps even different a living, they never have learned how to their parents’ childhoods – offers soothing Weather – June 2016, Vol. 71, No. 6 71, No. Vol. – June 2016, Weather You can fight the sleep, but not the dream work or plan for anything else… They are reassurance that, though the rough winds still savages because of their climate. may rage upon the seas that surround us, Everywhere you go, always take the weather we little islanders are calm and safe, in our with you By contrast, the brisk and bracing Northern pyjamas and tucked up in bed. In the words Everywhere you go, always take the weather. European is ‘a talented animal’ whose natu- of poet Carol Ann Duffy (1993): ral superiority is due to the ‘exciting variety’ ‘Weather with you’, Crowded House, 1992 of his changeable climate. ‘He will invent Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer hard games and delve into all branches of — Rockall, Malin. Dogger. Finisterre. Lately, the weather has been front-page knowledge; he will swim the seas and climb Talking about the weather also means not news. In the UK, we’ve just experienced the mountains and fly to the end of the saying anything about anything at all – it’s one of the warmest and wettest win- earth. And all this will be, to a great extent, just inconsequential chitchat. Which is odd, ters on record. The highest rainfall ever due to the influence of the weather’. really, because as botanist, naturalist and recorded in 24h fell on Cumbria (341.1mm, But enough meteorological eugenic compulsive list-maker Simon Leach (pers. 5 December) and, belying their common- poppycock. The British are also obsessed commun.) points out, ‘The weather is the place names, storms Desmond, Eva and with the weather forecast – and weather context that we all have to live within: it’s Frank left a trail of devastation across the forecasters. TV weatherman John Kettley the backdrop to everything we do, and an north. Birds are nesting early, and spring admitted in a BBC Radio 4 interview recently important factor influencing whether or not flowers are blossoming out of turn. The that he and many of his fellow presenters we enjoy what we’re doing’. strongest El Niño event ever has resulted would get ‘items of clothing’ sent to them in droughts in California and South from fans ’Not knickers, that sort of thing, Africa, and forest fires smouldering across but sweaters…’ he clarified hastily. Kettley, The weather tree keeper Indonesia. Hard on the heels of the COP 21 John Hammond, Michael Fish and their ilk Simon is kneeling down in his living room, climate change conference in Paris, it’s no are viewed almost like members of the fam- showing me the weather trees that he has wonder that people are looking at the sky ily, who appear every evening in the living made. These are posters, a little larger than and wondering how much of this is down rooms of millions of homes, with their pat- A1, showing the outline of a tree with twelve to human activity and worrying about our terned ties and reassuring predictions that branches, one for each month of the year, long-term forecasts. occasionally even turn out to be right. and there are leaves on each branch, each As someone who has only recently moved These little islands are chock full of land- representing a day. There are 19 of them, one back to England after two decades of living lubbers who wouldn’t know ‘a freighter from for every year since 1997 (Figure 1). There’s a with the very different weather patterns of a futtock’, as journalist Philip Reeves (2013) key in one corner, but no fixed rules about northern India, I’ve been fascinated by how puts it, and yet who harbour an intense what colour scheme you should use. ‘Most our lives and our temperaments are shaped and irrational love of the shipping forecast. people that I know who keep weather trees by the climate. The English are forever This daily round-up of weather conditions use blue for rain, whereas I tend to use blue talking about the weather; it’s almost our on the seas around Great Britain has been for snow because I associate blue with cold. national characteristic. As Samuel Johnson broadcast across the country for over a hun- Rain is green because it’s the rain that makes put it, back in 1758, ‘When two Englishmen dred years, with only three interruptions: the grass grow!’ he explains. Starting with meet, their first talk is of the weather’. during the two World Wars and once, on 20 January in the bottom left, the tree’s plain For the architects of Empire, the weather May 2014, due to a technical glitch at the white leaves accrue their colours clockwise was key: it was the making of man. According BBC (the latter provoking an outcry almost as, every day, before brushing his teeth and to the Wonderful World of Knowledge ency- severe enough to have set off World War III). going to bed, Simon takes out his special clopedia (Ogan, 1933) ‘Climate has a great In his book, And Now the Shipping Forecast, pencils (used only and specifically for this deal to do with character’. It dubs the tribal Peter Jefferson – who read the forecast for purpose) and colours in a leaf. peoples of the Amazon ‘the pampered dar- 40 years until 2009 – tries to account for its The section nearest the petiole, the leaf lings of our great Mother Earth’: appeal: ‘There is something in many of us stalk, is the early part of the day, and the 142 Always take the weather with you the weather take Always Weather – June 2016, Vol. 71, No. 6 71, No. Vol. – June 2016, Weather Figure 1. 2003 weather tree. (Source: Simon Leach.) 143 each day’s weather. The diary petered out as the snow thawed and everything returned to normal!’ He shows me the book, with its iconic cover of a windmill standing proud beneath a wide blue sky full of white cumulonim- bus clouds (Figure 3). Along with the classic Ladybird What to Look For series (Figure 4), this was the book that triggered his lifelong interest in the natural world, his first (and only) childhood diary: the seed that, thirty- four years later, would grow into his first Always take the weather with you the weather take Always weather tree. As a scientist, Simon is aware that his trees are of limited use as a dataset. While the uniform colours and style make them visually easy to compare with each other, the lack of hard and fast rules about how to fill them in makes one person’s trees difficult to compare with someone else’s. Simon’s trees record the weather that hap- Figure 2. April 2015. (Source: Simon Leach.) pens in Taunton, Somerset (when he’s not there to experience it in person, he has to Weather – June 2016, Vol. 71, No. 6 71, No. Vol. – June 2016, Weather get someone to ‘weather tree sit’). A friend weather is recorded in bands or spots or Simon’s sons’ cricket match scores, going of his used her weather tree to record the triangles of colour until night falls at the out to dinner with friends, ‘carnival,’ ‘space tip. A grey leaf with zigzags of yellow means walk’ and ‘apple day’. Mostly, these prompt predominantly cloudy with patches of sun- associative memories to flood out, but shine. Solid green indicates steady rainfall, occasionally they stay solidly cryptic. Simon whereas a green polka dot pattern means points to an annotation next to a 1999 leaf: spit-spots or drizzle. Where there’s a ‘heat- ‘ “Cement.” What on earth does that mean? wave’ (temperatures over 25°C) the leaf is he says, squinting,’ ‘I haven’t got a clue.’ outlined in pillarbox red, and where there’s He also uses the tree to record phenologi- frost, it’s rimmed with purple. A windy day cal data – the first flowering of primrose and (6 or above on the Beaufort Scale) is marked dog’s mercury; hazel catkins; horse-chestnut with three little black triangles joined at the and blackthorn bud-burst; the first singing leaf tip. On many days, the leaves are anno- great tits and blackcaps; murmurations of tated with figures showing maximum and starlings on the Somerset Levels; the first minimum temperatures. bumblebees, brimstones and orange-tip Each of the trees, therefore, is similar butterflies; the arrival of swifts and swal- – bluey-green around its lower (winter) lows. On his local patch, Simon maintains branches, shading to predominantly yellow annual records of first-flowering dates for and red around the summer months at more than 300 plant species, while he also the top.

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