By Arthur M. M. Katabalwa
I have watched the weather system
going through the UK over the last few days with a lot of jealousy. In Kampala
where I live at the moment, the temperatures have hardly struggled above 25C
yet in my UK home city Stoke On Trent, they have been beating that by nearly
3-4 degrees.
Anyone who has not lived on that
collection of islands called The British Isles will never understand why people
are fascinated with the weather. About 20 years ago, I was introduced to its
weather when I lived on the Isle of Man. The weather there was abysmal! Gales
come in from the sea and before anything can stop them, they have gone over the
island. One minute one may be enjoying a nice sunny day and the next a wall of
fog is heading in from Laxey.
So this brings me to the weather
for these last few days. One could have thought that the UK was facing
Armageddon with a “weather front like we have never seen before”sweeping in from
France. The met office warned of the dangers of over heating and people warned
to look out for the young, the old and those who are vulnerable.
July 1, 2015 was hot. It has been
the hottest day of the year so far. And the summer looks like it is going to be
a good one. But we have this almost undefeated propensity not to plan for these
weather events. Suddenly we had “the wrong kind of heat” and the rails were
buckling. Haven't we had this before? Rail passengers across the country have
been facing delays because of this.
But there is a respite in all of
this because the heat in the atmosphere has started bringing storms with
hailstones “the size of golf balls.”
Then as the heat progressed, we
had “Pizza oven” trains. I feel especially sorry for people who have been stuck
on the underground. Waterloo underground station must have been a nightmare! The papers described
the conditions further as “hotter than the Sahara”. The media screamed that the
conditions in the tunnels were not even “fit for the transportation of cattle”.
The South East has been “sweltering
in temperatures higher than Rio”. It has definitely been hotter than Kampala I
must say. Those Britons who are abroad at this time must feel really bad that
they are not enjoying the hot weather back home in Blighty.
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| Any excuse to have a "Liquid lunch" at Ye Olde Watling pub, London (Daily Mail Photo) |
Of course let us not downplay the
effect of this heat wave. We have had some people loose their lives. Over 57000
homes have been without power in from Yorkshire to County Durham, Tyne and Wear
to Northumberland. These people have faced real hardships.
But let us plan for these weather
extremes. With global warming, the UK has been warned of such events. Every once
so often the jet stream gets stuck in a rut and whatever weather pattern it has
thrown to the UK is stuck. Ours are islands are stuck off the north west coast
of Europe and the latitude at which they are at means that the weather is
forever going to be abysmal. But we must learn to live with it. With time, the
weather will become Autumnal and we will have “angry skies”. Oh, and we will
have the wrong kind of sunshine because train drivers will not be able to see the
signal pulling out of Slough. And we will have “the wrong kind of leaves” as
train companies cancel trains because of “adverse rail top conditions”
And then the winter will come and
with the first snow flake we will complain that the weather is “Arctic”.
Heathrow will grind to a halt as pilots will not be able to navigate from T4 to
the north runway. But all will be fine because we know that with our weather
conditions, we are prone to a bit of hyperbole. And don’t we LOVE IT!
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