I am at a certain age when the weather is very important.
I rely upon the regular TV forecasts which fall between the usual banale and boring converstaions that characterise the early morning programmes as I am getting ready to go to work. I try to catch the weather bulletins at the end of the on the hour news updates as I drive around between appointments but mostly I just rely upon my own observations and experience.
What is very obvious is that the official weather reporting is invariably wrong.
Not a life threatening thing you would think but nevertheless quite important in determining how my day progresses.
I do spend a lot of my working hours in the great outdoors and so need to be aware whether I need my wet weather gear, sun screen, strongest umbrella or wellington boots. I do keep such equipment in the boot of the car to be prepared for every eventuality in climatic conditions.
There has been a recent trend for no real trends in the weather making forecasting and being prepared very difficult.
Mother Nature seems very confused with, in any single 24 hour period, the likelihood of sleat, sunstroke, battering by gale force winds and inundation by flash floods.
There are those who attribute the unnatural variations in climate to that there global warming. There are as many opinions as to the causes as there are changes in the weather with popular conspiracy theories including solar activity, pollution, the Chinese and even the contradiction of the planet hotting up whilst struggling to offset an Ice Age.
What is also more apparent are the dramatic differences in the weather at very close quarters, meaning from town to town and even street to street.
One phenomena that amazed me was the sight of torrential rain in my front garden and yet glorious sunny and dry weather in the back garden.
I have also seen from a distance, when driving, some very ominous black clouds concentrated over a village close to my home which caused major flood disruption and damage from the resultant downpour and yet my garden, within only a couple of miles, remained parched and drought ridden.
The National Weather Service in the UK seems to have accepted this very local aspect and a public participation project has been launched under the title of "weather watchers".
This invites individuals to register and post their own observations and measurements on line and with these being collated onto an inter-active map for public access purposes.
It is a natural development of social media and the aspects of community and conversation form a major thread.
Some sceptics may regard this project as weather forecasting on the cheap, along the lines of the much maligned Big Society Idea of a specific politician but I think that it just legitimises the closet activities of a good proportion of the Great British population.
I often see home made weather stations in gardens and on allotment land and can remember my own excitement at taking readings and data from a school yard version when at junior school.
I am a bit conflicted in the process of debating whether or not to sign up as a Weather Watcher.
The portal allows for not only uploading of temperature, humidity, wind speed and rainfall data but also photos and other supporting information from within your own boundaries. I see that eight hundred people have already signed up to the first phase of being Weather Watchers and I admire them for it and wish them well.
What I am not too happy about is having to dilute my anger and frustration that inevitably arises from being told one thing by the professional weatherman or woman of that day and yet experiencing something very different between them and now, potentially, my own neighbours.
There is something to be said for venting fury caused by the surprise of rain sodden feet and a soaking to the skin on the likes of Schafernaker, Kirkwood, Avery and Willetts rather than the kindly looking elderly man with weather guage from number 6 down our street.
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