No.101, Tuesday, 17th. March 2026

Here in south Devon it is dry, mostly cloudy with a light breeze and 11 degrees celsius. There is a good chance we will see the sun this afternoon and it is highly unlikely that there will be any rain. I sound like a weather forecaster, but then, don’t most of us?

I was thinking this morning about a discussion that took place over a number of days on the PM news programme on Radio 4. It was on weather apps and some people were irritated by the symbols used, which they thought gave a false impression of the weather. I was utterly bemused and that is probably because I see all the data in the app, which is enough to tell me what to expect for the day ahead. Why would I rely on a single symbol on an app icon? That would be just plain daft.

When I was a schoolboy some older members of my family had barometers and made their own forecasts. They marked where pressure was at its lowest and highest, and watched the mercury rise or fall. They knew what that meant, and used this knowledge to decide if it might be a good idea to wear a raincoat and take a brolly. They might get it wrong, but would generally prefer to err on the side of caution. No app needed.

Nowadays, if an app icon has a cloud on it, some people seem to assume that it will be cloudy all day. How daft is that? Weather is far too complex to be reduced to a symbol on an app icon. Open the app and you have all the data you need to make your own forecast, just as my grand-parents did when they checked the barometer, only with a higher likelihood of being right.