h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not having lived abroad, I've never really seen the English as the foreigner would. I guess tourists would know us for our policemen ("bobbies") in their familiar bell-shaped helmets, or for our red post boxes, or our landmarks, like Buckingham Palace or Tower Bridge.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. I know that all Frenchmen wear berets and stripy shirts and carry baguettes. Germans wear Lederhosen, drink very large jugs of beer and eat lots of sausages. Italians dress in really smart suits. Americans eat a lot of hamburgers. It goes on.

But one thing I heard a while ago is that Englishmen once had (maybe still do have) a stereotype as black-bowler-hatted commuters carrying umbrellas. Apparently it never stops raining here and we never stop moaning about it.

Well, that's simply ridiculous. Of course it doesn't rain here all the time. And as for being obsessed with talking about the weather, well, ok, it might break the ice when starting a conversation with a stranger, but there's no reason for any unhealthy fixation with it. I can't imagine where that stereotype originated. Obsessed with rain? Completely untrue...


And then the other day I was doing some online research, and my wanderings took me to the website of one of my country's great institutions, the British Library. Not only does their building hold a copy of everything ever published in the modern era, but they have a large online database of all sorts of information.

One particular collection caught my eye. It was the British Library Sound Archive:

http://sounds.bl.uk/

When you get to the site, you'll see all sorts of things: accents and dialects, music, historical events. You can explore it for ages, but there's one specific resource I need to direct you to.

Click on the "Environment and Nature" collection.

Among the various types of wildlife recordings you can access here, there's a collection which is entitled "Weather" - Field recordings of meteorological phenomena.

Click this, and you can choose the type of weather you want to listen to: Hail, Rain, Snow, Thunderstorm, or Wind.

Choose "Rain".

You are now at the heart of one of the British Library's most precious resources. This is the place where all English people indoctrinated into the secret may access... yes, it's true... the National Collection of Rain Recordings.


And who'd have thought there were so many different types of rain? Among the sounds offered for your enjoyment are:

Calm, overcast, occasional drizzle and rain, warm. torrential rain by 10am,
Gentle rain becoming heavier, and
Heavy rain becoming lighter.

You can hear:

Rain drops on leaves,
Rain in an urban garden, and
Rain in woodland.

There's:

Rain on a window,
Rain falling on a glass roof,
Rain on a corrugated-tin roof.


And for the real enthusiast (and be sure to slowly work your way up to this one), there's:

Rain falling on a microphone windshield against a backdrop of geese.


So, there it is. I probably shouldn't have drawn attention to one of our greatest secrets. If you visit, please treat it with the reverence it deserves.

Oh. damn.
Now you have just distroyed any free time I might have had, I can't see any point in replying to the E-mail I just got about a job.

I have one very good friend, who wears a bowler hat, and nearly* always carries an umbrella

I was also, many years ago now, told by none other than my metiorology lectuerr (and climatology etc, and weather), that there is a very good reason, why the British (and one assumes thereby also the English), talk about the weather a lot;
We have a lot of weather. Being an island, and not a very big island at that, we're hugely influenced by teh water, and the fronts which come over the waters that surroudn us; Without any great big landmass, to the country, there arn't many bits, 'in the middle', which are so far removed from the exterior, of the country, to not, themselves be influenced by teh seas surrounding us; So there isn't any big area, in the middle, that is constant....
Having been bought up, on the coast, half a mile, if your near the coast, is enough to move from one climate to another, on teh same day...

I'm going to spend hours listening to these rain recordings! fabulus...

I remember in the 80s going past the London Underground Lost Property Office in Baker Street, where you could buy the things that had been found on the underground and not claimed after a year. They had about 5,000 black umbrellas.

Snork, snork, snork.

You DO talk about the weather all the time. None of you ever stops. Prof Animal Chaos can discuss it for hours...

You're almost as bad as my late dad, who had a long-term addiction to the Weather Channel.

But thanks for that link, Icy. Looks like fun. When we can't sleep, we'll listen to the rain recordings.

Why don't we have an umbrella smiley?

Americans don't talk about the weather because it is so consistent. The weather forecast on TV is for the WHOLE CONTINENT. In Ireland, the weather varies by the mile, so there is something to talk about. The Brits aren't quite as bad as the Irish for talking about the weather, because it doesn't rain much in England compared with here.

Scotland is a different story.

I live in Manchester, of *course* I talk about the weather!

There was that lovely quote that goes something like: Most countries have a climate, we have weather.

Gnomon, I guess it's been a while since you were in Manchester then?

I lived in Manchester for a bit over a year; Manchester does* have climate, as it rained every day I lived there... seriously...
A couple of weeks ago, here in Cambridge, we had bright sunshine, rain, snow and sleet, within about forteen hours yeh, in may... and it varied, within a couple of miles, depending where you were, as to what it was doing, at any particular time

When I was last on holiday in the Alps, I was told by a local that they had extraordinarily variable weather, but it varied by the hour rather than by the day. In any 24 hour period they could expect pretty much everything to be featured. There was no point being fixated by it. If it rained, it would soon stop.

The English climate seems to set in for the season. If the Gulf Stream decides to pass to the west of Ireland, we can have months of dry, sunny weather. If it passes over the British Isles it's wet, wet wet (as happened last year).

Living on the Isle of Wight's east side, we always said that the West Wight was windier. And it is.
We get much better weather on the east Wight.

<BB<

I live on the Texas Gulf Coast. One year, when I was still a teenager, we had some relatives from the hills to the west of the Appalachians in West(bygod)Virginia down for the summer. One day, we were planning on going to the local amusement park, Astroworld, when it started to rain. All the hillbillies kept preparing and packing for the trip into town. We locals just sat there. One of the cousins asked why we weren't getting ready, why we were letting a little rain ruin our day? They were used to rain storms that rarely lasted more than an hour. We had to point out that this wasn't just a rain storm, it was a tropical depression.

I have a friend who works in the Civil Service. Always wears a suit and tie in the pub, a Barbour coat (immaculate) and has an umbrella on his arm. Constantly. Never let's it go. Even drinks his with it in the crook of his arm. If bowlers were still de rigeur he'd wear one.

I can remember being at a folk festival around 30 years ago and a French team had been booked. They danced on stilts as the worked in the vineyards on them.

The last night was party night and was made up of the usual show but also many spoofs and slapstick.

The French did the traditional rapper sword dance, but were dressed in suits, wore bowlers and used umbrellas as swords. Very very impressive.

We may talk about weather, but I bet we are the only nation who will go to the beach and sit on it in the rain. Or, as I did, last summer, have a picnic in a thunderstorm, because we'd arranged the picnic ages before.
Just sheltered under rainbows. Gave up after half an hour though.

MMF

haa! William and I had a picnic on last Saturday... the forecast was good, the Friday had been nice... I spent Friday making onion bread and other bits of savoury things and had some nice cheeses and ham in... I prepared the sandwichs and got stuff together Saturday morning...
Saturday afternoon, our warm coats on, umbrella at the ready (and a bowler hat for William, and my trilby on me), we sat.... in the freezing wind, and had the picnic....
We just had a little squall here, and the wind got up...half an hour ago it was warm and humid, and a bit earlier the sun was briefly out, and demonstrating its got power to it, if the thing can just get to break through I may have to give up my trilby for a stovepipe hat, a pith helmut, or a deerstalker, as the trilby isn't quite as excentric as it should be... and it does look a little odd if I wear my bowler at the same time as William, when we're out, as it isn't so common for bowlers to be warn these days...

Okay, I don't want to claim you people painted the devil on the wall, but the US has Weather today. Talk about continent-wide.

There's a high risk of a derecho spreading from Iowa all the way to Maryland. This is a fast-moving storm with hail, high winds, and lightning. It threatens Milwaukee, Chicago, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, possibly Washington, DC. If it does what they fear, it can do serious damage.

Helpful weather map from the government:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html

Now, why can't the NSA take on the weather?

Notice how the NSA has the budget for an eleventy billion dollar "data center" in Utah to read your emails and listen to your phone calls, but NOAA and NASA are struggling to keep funding for projects that could warn folks about their houses flooding or being leveled by windstorms?

Ecatly.

Exactly, even.

Utah?

Mormon country?

*wonders at the thought of 2legs worrying about looking odd in the *same sentence* as stating that he needs more eccentric headgear*



*realizes "eccentric" is more than "odd"*

*also realizes she's known 2legs for far too long*