What will the weather be like

"Other countries have climates, Britain has weather," somebody once said with feeling. And indeed autumn, winter, spring or summer can prove equally unreliable. Wimbledon can be washed out in June; rain stops cricket matches round the country in July; summer bazaars and fetes are driven indoors. So the business of forecasting the weather becomes all important — not just to farmers and fishermen, whose very livelihoods depend on it, but for anyone planning a week-end or a day in the country.

Modern techniques and the conquest of space have greatly refined the whole field of meteorological research. Weather satellites and balloons and meteorological stations on land and at sea are constantly transmitting information for the experts to interpret.

This reaches the public in the form of the weather charts on television and reports on the radio and in the press. The rate of accuracy for daily forecasts is as high as 85%, just a little lower for 3-day forecasts. Only farmers and certain industries get 7-day forecasts — the maximum period for which it is possible to forecast with any degree of accuracy at present, using the latest techniques.

Statistics show that the chances of tomorrows weather being broadly the same as todays are as high as 65%-70%. A lot of country people still like to make their own daily forecasts, by studying the sky, the way the birds fly or even the smoke from their chimneys, although they will not be as reliable as those produced by the professionals. "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight" is perhaps the best known of these rustic forecasts; here for you to test for yourselves are a few others.

You can expect good weather if…
...the Milky Way is clearly visible at night
...an overcast sky is followed by a red sky at night
...the smoke from the chimney goes straight up and disperses at once
...the barometer drops considerably during dull weather in winter
...or rises considerably in summer

You can expect bad weather if…
...the outline of the moon is clearly visible "in the arms of" the new moon (this warning is obviously a piece of ancient folk wisdom as it occurs in the 18th Century ballad, "Sir Patrick Spens ")

...the sky looks dark blue in the morning after a rainstorm
...there is a rainbow in the morning
...the sky looks ashen grey
...the smoke from the chimney does not disperse quickly
...the swallows are flying low
...the sky at sunset is a faded yellow
...you can hear sounds clearly from a long way away
...there are small black clouds in the sky
...the sky is very clear and you can see a long way ahead
...dust swirls up from the roads

You can expect thunderstorms if...
...morning mist is observed during the summer
...the cocks crow at unusual times
...the fish jump out of the water
...the cat yawns

You may take all this with a pinch of salt, but it would be fun for the children to make their own lists of weather signs and try their hand at making their own "instruments"; a barometer, a rain-meter, a weather-cock and a Noah's Ark weather house.

For the barometer you will need: an empty glass jar, a straw, a small piece of cork, a section of a toy balloon stretched tightly over the top of the jar and held in place with a rubber band, and a piece of wood on which to mark the various weather conditions from your own observations — rain, changeable, sunny. Place the straw on the piece of cork over the top of the jar, with one end pointing to the wood. When the air pressure becomes greater, the volume in the jar decreases and the straw goes down.

For the rain-meter which you keep out of doors, you need to mark the outside of a jar or bottle accurately in inches and/or millimeters (use waterproof paint, so it doesn't run), put a funnel in the top and you can keep an accurate check on the amount of rain that has fallen. Make sure that the vane can turn easily on the nail as the wind moves it.

The secret of the Noah's Ark weather house is a piece of catgut (the kind of thing which was used for sewing up incisions after an operation). Catgut has the property of shrinking when dry and stretching when it's moist. In the weather house, this contracting and expanding causes a rotating movement of the board on which the two figures stand. In dry weather the catgut tightens and Noah's wife moves out, in wet weather the gut stretches and it's Noah's turn to appear.