Britain loves talking about the weather – but we hate weather warnings more than anything else

Experts issue alerts and the public ignores them. Old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly debate throwing cautions to the wind

There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure. Thankfully, old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly are here to dissect the way we live now…
There’s a cliché in journalism that’s often reheated on social media – usually by an excruciatingly earnest American who attributes it to their first, awe-inspiring editor. ‘If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both – your job is to look out the f—king window and find out which is true.’
Quite grating, really. Where is the respect for people who have a challenging word count before them? Or fancy ridiculing the guy who said it’s dry, because it’s so clearly bucketing down and he has tiny, orange hands? Also, I believe you’d be in with a better shot at your Pulitzer if you actually went outside, but that’s by the by.
I get the idea: balance for balance’s sake does nobody any good. Only, the choice of metaphor is a shame, because surely the weather is one area where we should just take the experts’ word for it. They’ve got the models. And they’re only trying to help.
As it is, British people are predisposed to scorn meteorologists as incorrect and alarmist. Weather warnings are the thing they hate most. ‘A warning? That there’ll be weather? What next, signs to remind us about gravity?! Pathetic…’ is the general reaction when the Met Office has the temerity to tell us to mind how we go.
Personally, I would like a tenfold increase in weather warnings, especially if we can harness machine learning to make them hyper-specific.
‘Yellow warning: it’s that annoying kind of fine rain today where, like, you don’t really need an umbrella or coat but you will look like Leo Sayer by the end of your breakfast meeting…’ Useful.
‘Amber warning: nothing really scary, chill, but it’s muggier than an Emma Bridgewater shop out there. Pack a deodorant and thank us later.’ Instructive.
‘Red warning: Baltic. Be careful, but be more mindful of people saying that “it actually feels too cold to snow”. They obviously haven’t seen that the Arctic is basically MADE OF SNOW. Idiots.’ A blessing.
On some things, it’s best to trust the information you get and act on it, for your own safety. And I know this to be true. I sit by a window.
Recently, a weather alert was issued for Worcestershire by the Met Office and the UK Health Security Agency. ‘Observed increase in mortality across the population likely, particularly in the 65+ age group,’ it said. I like the phraseology: ‘Observed increase in mortality.’ They’ll be dropping like flies openly, instead of sneakily pegging out behind closed doors. And why would mortality be swinging his scythe? Because the temperature was predicted to reach 28C (82.4F).
I’ve just been watching the best film I’ve seen this year. It’s called Stooking and Stacking, directed by Rosanne Hunter in 1943. Twelve minutes, B&W. It shows men gathering wheatsheaves into stooks, then, when they’re dry, building them into a stack. It’s online, free, from the BFI. You’ll love it.
The point for the moment is that the immensely hard work of stooking and stacking, in hot harvest weather, provoked the men into taking their jackets off. They kept their waistcoats on, of course. 
No doubt wearing waistcoats in hot weather while engaged in strenuous work led to an ‘increase in mortality’, but it was probably not ‘observed’ because casualties from the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 distracted attention.
The Met Office (which since 2000 has thought us too stupid to cope with its real name, the Meteorological Office) sends out hot weather warnings because ‘whilst many of us like to enjoy the sunshine and hot weather, we should make sure we do it safely’. 
The trouble with warnings (too hot, too wet, too much lightning) is that they instil a spirit of craven fear when weather exists mostly to be defied. If it looks as though it will snow, surrendering before a flake has fallen brings the precautionary cancellation of all trains and closure of schools. No one can go to work, but it is deemed worthwhile if just one person avoids slipping on an icy patch.
Leave me to drink a lot in hot weather and wear a hat against the sunbeams, but stop crying wolf, and undermining the real emergency warning to come at the world’s end when Sköll and Hati, the sons of Fenrir the wolf, swallow the sun and the moon.