Some Snow In The Hand

Some Snow In The Hand

Although weather forecasting now relies on much more advanced technology than it did circa 1980, there's one aspect of it that is now much less attractive than it used to be, if you follow my (snow) drift.

Michael Fish and friends (sounds like the name of a meteorological chatshow that probably only ran for one season) would often hold a little bit of mystery in their hands, that as a kid watching at home at Christmas or early in the New Year would always be potentially thrilling.

Once upon a time, before all this computer graphics jiggery-pokery, you'd have that set of boards decorated with all sorts of interesting symbols denoting wind speed and temperature plus whether it would be sunny, cloudy or a mixture of the two.

These would be set up before the broadcast, giving you the general picture, but the weather bod on duty would be called upon to show if anything was likely to change during the day.

It all relied on the magnetic clouds actually sticking to the board, of course, which didn't always happen and it was usually a good idea if people could spell the word 'FOG' the right way round*.

But in that post New Year slog of having to go back to school, there was always the real chance in January or February that I might get a day or two off if the bus couldn't negociate the narrow country lanes due to freezing conditions.

A proper fall of snow was always welcome, at least from my point of view, so I can remember hoping that Mister Fish would have in his hand a pair of snowflakes that he'd attach down South with that familiar phrase 'but conditions will worsen overnight'.

If you got up really close to the screen you could sometimes forecast what the forecast was going to be.

And even modern computers have trouble with that...

*UPDATE (30/12/2018)  : Gary James has today admitted that he and his mate John were responsible for swapping the letters in 'FOG' around during a late-night wander around TV Centre!

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)