This Side of the Pond

I’ve been confusing my husband for years, but neither of us realized I was doing it. While that sentence could probably apply to our entire marriage, in this case I’m talking specifically about my reaction to the weather.

If there’s one good thing about all these storms (and it’s really only the one thing – just ask the holes in my windshield), it’s that they’ve been an opportunity to wheel out a few of the many, many sayings I’ve learned from my people about weather. As you may know, we’re obsessed with discussing what the skies are going to do next, and/or our overall displeasure with what they’re doing right now.

In fact, a study in 2019 found that eight out of ten Brits admit they love discussing the climate and, on average, will spend about the equivalent of six months of their lives doing exactly that.

To help us do that, we’ve dreamed up all sorts of colorful ways to describe the weather. “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” might sound rude, for example, but it actually refers to the practice of putting iron cannon balls on a brass plate on the deck of a war ship; when it was cold, the brass contracted enough for the iron balls to fall out.

“The calm before the storm” also comes from sailors, and literally refers for the tendency for a storm to attract the air around it as it approaches, leaving a low-pressure vacuum that’s warmer and drier than what was there before. We know that saying has been in use since at least 1601, when it was used in a play called “The Dumb Knight”.

We’ll tell you it’s lovely weather for ducks if it’s raining, we’ll call a hot day a “scorcher”, we’ll describe a storm as a hurly-burly and a May storm is sometimes referred to as a cow-quaker. The Scots even have a word for snow swirling around a corner: feefle.

But the specific saying that caused me to baffle my husband was much more mundane – or so I thought. I’ve noted at regular intervals throughout the last few stormy days that, “It looks like the weather is about to break”.

Seems simple enough, right? Not so, as it turns out.

What my husband heard is probably what you’re assuming I meant: the storm looks like it will soon be clearing up, and the sun will come back out.

This is logical, but I actually meant the opposite. When I use this saying, it’s to let you know that the clouds are gathering and the rain will soon begin.

Take this opening sentence from a British news source a couple of weeks ago: “Bristol’s pleasant late spring sunshine and dry weather is about to break – and then some – with seven hours of heavy rain forecast from first thing tomorrow.”

The tone of that particular quote is mournful, but I have my suspicions about why we use the saying differently. I think the Brits like it better when we need to wear a sweater and simply aren’t built to tolerate the kind of temperatures we’ve been warned are coming to Crook County this weekend.

Because we’re an island, spring storms in the UK are usually preceded by the kind of muggy weather that leaves you covered in a sheen of sweat even if the temperature is relatively low. It’s oppressive and uncomfortable, a world away from the pleasant dry heat of a Wyoming summer.

Which leads to another common British description of the weather: “close”. When a Brit tells you the weather is “close”, we mean that it’s humid and sticky and a thunderstorm is close. We’ve been using that description since at least the 1500s and, while nobody can quite agree on its origins, it denotes the confined and stifling feeling of pre-storm mugginess.

Is it any wonder that we’d be looking for signs that the situation won’t last for too much longer? When the storm finally arrives, it will generally clear the air (quite literally) and reset the muggy gauge, which is a blessed relief for anyone hoping to finally get some sleep.

We don’t have any air conditioning, you see – the only place you’ll find it is in large, modern office buildings or malls. The only option to cool your home is to open the windows and try to create a breeze.

AC does seem to be slowly introducing itself to the isles. My parents and brother both have portable units you can balance in the window in times of extreme heat, but I’ve lived here long enough to feel quietly sorry for them, having calculated the square footage their units are designed to cool.

Those units have to work even harder in a country where we usually have mild summers and cold winters, because we’ve designed our homes to hold the heat. This does make sense, because it’s only recently that we’ve seen regular heatwaves outside of the usual three weeks at the end of July.

Just as our roads are built for rain instead of snow, we’ve built our infrastructure for chilly, rain-soaked winters and not the baking sun.

Weather has an impact on every aspect of life, which is why I don’t see an issue with the fact that we Brits like to keep a close eye on what the heavens have planned, and make sure to tell each other as often as possible. Describing weather is so deeply ingrained in my culture that our brains seem wired to release a pleasure boost every time you do, so it won’t surprise you to hear that I’ve very much enjoyed writing this column.

Whether or not it’s made any sense to you is, of course, a different question. But it really has been raining cats and dogs this week, hasn’t it?