One of the first lies we tell our children in Britain is that the year can be divided into four distinct seasons. One of these, the picture books suggest, will feature blue skies with a bright yellow orb in them; another, at the far end of the year, a landscape blanketed in white, and a world that’s stopped so that everyone can build a snowman. The rather more prosaic reality – that for upwards of 200 days a year, the weather in these islands is uniformly grey, damp and mild – rarely makes it to the picture books.
But the news media’s passion for extreme weather cannot be sated. Late last week, the Met Office issued a yellow warning (which can mean, helpfully, either severe weather affecting a few people, or less severe weather affecting many). On Friday morning, in Wales, the Midlands and the north, that was upgraded to amber (which means significant chance of travel disruption, potential power cuts and risk to life and property).
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