Britain is braced for the onslaught of Light Afternoon Drizzle Brian, then the nightmare of Rather Blustery Morning Samantha. Stock up on nail guns and hardboard now. The assault from our malevolent skies never ceases.It sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but it is real. The Met Office, and its Irish equivalent, Met Éireann, have “teamed up” in a new venture that invites the public to send in names for “extreme weather events” affecting the British Isles. This follows the practice of giving people’s names to hurricanes and other mega‑storms, which has been in use for decades.
It’s a nice PR wheeze, perhaps, but it illustrates a salient point. No other country on Earth talks more about its weather – and no other country on Earth has such a misguided and factually incorrect impression of what its weather actually is.