Can we have fewer weather warnings please?

It should suffice for forecasters to simply provide us with their best assessment of the forthcoming weather and for risk assessments to be left to organisations better placed to assess risk

As an Englishman it has been remiss of me not to talk on this page about the weather. I’ve a friend who, in his work, speaks often to people in the far east. He tells me how it amuses him that these salespeople (my friend is a buyer) always open with talking about the weather, it’s as if their training tells them, “English people like to talk about the weather”, so that’s what they do. So here we go, let’s talk about the weather or, more specifically, weather forecasting and weather warnings.

There’s an old joke about England that we have weather, other places have climate. And it is true that Britain’s location and maritime aspect results in a climate featuring what we call ‘changeable’ weather. It was minus 5 this morning as I de-iced the car but it is entirely possible in an English January that the temperature next week will reach 10 degrees centigrade (for Americans and old school Brits that in Fahrenheit is 23 degrees and 50 degrees). This variability, however, is not my beef, although it is the reason why talking about the weather is a feature of British conversation. My beef is that, over recent years, we have begun to catastrophise weather forecasting and reporting. From a world where the possibility of snow and ice was accompanied by advice along the lines of ‘take care if you’re going out today’, we have moved to one where there are formal warnings and portentous state-sponsored advice not to go to work because it is cold, windy, wet or snowing. Plus, in yet another reflection of 21st century twee, we have begun to give names to rainstorms.

On Thursday and Friday this week, the Met Office, the BBC, my local council and assorted weather apps all announced warnings about snow, ice and wind. This was a ‘yellow warning’ which I think means you’re allowed to leave the house accompanied by an adult or something along those lines. The newspapers were filled with swirly AI-generated storm maps and talk of Storm Goretti (it seems it was the turn of the French to name the storm and they’d not got the message about using cutesy kids names for dangerous weather systems). I also appreciate that, for readers in England’s south-west this was a properly big storm accompanied by rain and, in some places, snow. But here in the beautiful South Pennines, having been warned of imminent chaos, what we got was a chilly wind and 24 hours of unpleasantly cold rain. My phone told me this phenomenon is called a “wintry mix” which does make it sound like one of those algorithm-generated Spotify playlists.

The problem here is that weather forecasting seems to have been taken over by Chicken Licken with the Met Office and its acolytes almost literally running around telling everyone that the sky was falling and they are off to tell the king. Where once we had blue and green weather maps presented by cheery men cosplaying as geography teachers in their tweedy jackets and checked shirts, we now have bright red and yellow maps or, worse, frighteningly animated maps swooshing across our screens. Perhaps there’s a terrible folk memory of 1987’s Great Storm where the forecasters got it very wrong with Michael Fish telling a viewer who called in about a hurricane that “if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!”

Because humans are wired to give more attention to downside risk, the result of catastrophising weather forecasting is that people come to see bad weather as a crisis rather than as…well…bad weather. The very fact of a possibility of snow (the snow we ended up not getting) resulted in taxis refusing rides into the villages, in the cancellation of events and the now ritual closing of every school for miles around. At no point was anywhere near here inaccessible, it just wasn’t very pleasant out. But the warnings had done their job and people’s lives had been disrupted for no good reason.

I do think weather forecasting is important. For some people like farmers, fishermen and seafarers, forecasting is very important and accuracy (or at least a high degree of confidence) really matters. I also appreciate that forecasting isn’t as easy as it looks when that pretty young woman is waving her hands over a big map at the end of the evening news. And predicting snow (or not snow) is especially tricky in Britain. But none of this requires a system that seems to exaggerate the risks by applying a broad warning system that, too often, simply means it is a bit windy, icy or wet. Nor does good forecasting benefit from making out that regular summer or winter temperatures are a risk to life and limb. What people require is reliable information allowing them to make decisions ranging from ‘shall I set out into the North Sea’ right the way down to ‘do I need a hat or a brolly’.

Having a frequently used ‘yellow warning’ system really isn’t as helpful as the Met Office seem to believe. One effect of the weather not being bad enough to merit warnings (after the event) is that people start to see them as crying wolf thereby undermining the good intent of warning people. Part of the reason for the adoption of warning systems is how we consume weather forecasting with us relying more on a variety of apps and websites rather than the forecast on the radio or TV. But the current approach, by suggesting catastrophe, undermines the quality of forecasting. It should suffice for the public bodies leading on forecasting to simply provide us with their best assessment of the forthcoming weather and for risk assessments to be left to people and organisations better placed to make those assessments.

In writing this (to the sound of Weather Report obviously) I am avoiding criticising the Met Office’s actual forecasting. I know there are concerns from some quarters but I’m not qualified to assess how good or bad the Met Office’s forecasts might be. I am, however, qualified to talk about how they present these forecasts to the public and I think the agency does us a disservice by emphasising warnings for what is, in truth, pretty much normal weather variation. The simplest resolution is to scrap the ‘yellow warning’ and get a clearer understanding of what constitutes a red warning. Emergency services, local councils, transport organisations and plenty of private businesses are entirely capable of making sensible risk assessments based on forecasting without the forecasting agency pushing them towards seeing bad weather as almost always a risk.