What is it about the English that they spend so long discussing their weather?
We take a look at what lies behind the national obsession and find out how the language has evolved to cover every aspect of the Englishman and woman’s favourite topic of conversation.
“England’s Weather”
Don’t Forget Your Umbrella…
On a day in June,
It can rain at noon,
From a sky where no cloudlet lay.
So goes Noel Scott’s poem “England’s Weather” – and perhaps it’s that very unpredictability that goes some way to explaining the topic’s hold over the English psyche.
Britain sits at the end of a “storm track” – a narrow zone over the ocean down which storms travel, driven by prevailing winds and generated by warm air from the equator meeting cold air from the North Pole.
Then there’s the Gulf Stream, which makes the British climate warmer than it should be for its latitude: London is actually farther north than Calgary in Canada, but its average January temperature is a positively balmy 5° C, a full twelve degrees warmer than its Canadian cousin.
Add to that Britain’s status as an island nation with lots of moisture in the air, and you have all the ingredients to make weather forecasting an extreme sport.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising that a 2015 poll calculated that English people spend the equivalent of five months of their lives discussing whether or not it looks like rain.
Social Propriety?
An alternative theory is that the English obsession has less to do with the country’s geography and unusual weather patterns than with a simple desire to navigate social situations.
Talking about the weather can be a way of initiating conversation, avoiding an awkward silence or even gauging someone else’s mood.
Research into English weather – related conversations – for yes, such a thing exists – has shown that people almost always begin the topic in the form of a question, even if just through the tone of their voice.
And there are rules to be obeyed too: the person answering must agree.
If, for example, Janet says, “Nice day, isn’t it?” and John replies, “No,” he is in serious breach of social etiquette – and Janet is quite entitled to refuse to lend him her sun tan lotion.
The theory goes that all cultures have these kind of conversation pieces but that the topic varies from place to place.
In some parts of the world, the questions that act as icebreakers will be quite different – in the Middle East, China or South America, for example, people might ask about someone’s job, age or even weight.
But for the English, with their famous reserve, a less personal subject is more comfort