Thursday 23 March 2023

Today Is...World Meteorological Day

Thanks to something very big hitting the Earth at some point early in its history to knock it off kilter, instead of rotating with its axis perpendicular to its orbital plane, it is tilted so here we are, orbiting the Sun with the axis pointed in the same direction so different parts of the Earth get the suns rays as we travel through the year and that creates our weather.
I was watching the weather forecast with my young niece once and after hearing about thunderstorms, she turned to me and asked me what was a thunderstorm.
I smiled at her, and looking down at her beautiful, upturned face full of wonderment and decided it was time to explain to her the meteorologically correct reasons why we get different types of weather.
I began with Thunderstorms seeing as that was what she asked about and explained that Thunder was the clouds banging together and lightning was God (or sometimes Jesus if God was busy saving Queens or Blessing America) using a torch to check that the clouds were not too badly damaged.
I then went on to rain which is God, being a man and having the inherited man disease of being unable to aim his wee the 2ft from his midriff to the toilet bowl accurately most of the time.
Snow is God going a bit mad with the Holy Talcum powder after his bath and as for Hurricanes, you know that song about Beans being the musical fruit and the more you eat the more you toot, well God does like his beans on toast and i mean he really likes his beans on toast.
Fog is God having his early morning cigarette which he does on the sly sometimes before Jesus gets up which is why you mostly see it in the morning and finally, sunshine is when God is just chilling watching TV or something, so the big galoot isn't doing anything to affect us down here.
Being British, we do obsess about it and the weather forecasts are watched religiously so everyone would have noticed how the MET Office has been sneaking in some new terms such as Weather Bomb, Pineapple Express, Continental Blowtorch and Explosive Cyclogenesis.
Once upon a time the weather forecaster would appear on screen, slap a few magnetic symbols on a map and vaguely explain in 30 seconds how it would be sunny in the south and rainy in the north and then we got computer graphics and where previously we had warm air moving up from the continent, we now have a continental blowtorch, Weather bombs or and explosive cyclogenesis.
I do like the new terms but i would go with an accelerated detonative tempest or a screaming shatterstorm but then i would also make Tomasz Schafernake do the forecast in nothing but budgie smugglers so might be better not to ask me

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