The problem with out weather here in UK is not that it is extreme, but rather that it is unpredictable and changeable ('Four seasons in a round of golf!' said Bob Hope) Our media love to dramatise it. Other countries must laugh when we grind to a halt in a couple of centimetres of snow, and the headlines cry Chaos! and Misery for milliions! Just look at the graphics and listen to the language and tone of voice on the TV weather reports. A result perhaps of The Michael Fish Effect? (Michael Fish was a BBC weatherman who famously, or infamously, reassured people that there would be no hurricane on the night before the 1987 storm, which hit southern England causing huge damage and killing nine people. It was the worst storm in living memory.)
Tonight on another fairly rough ferry crossing, I noted how cheery was the tone of voice announcing -
Should you have to abandon ship, the lifeboats will be launched.
I put my head down and tried to concentrate on a challenging su doku so as not to even think of the possiblity as the flat bottomed ferry banged and thudded through the waves.
When it gets a bit rough here in winter I like to read about the lives of people in places where it is really wild, (it put's it in perspective) and I am rereading Sylvain Tisson's Consolations of the Forest.