Hey, It's The Sun!

When a man with a PhD in pop gives mad props, shows some love and makes some noise for the Weather Doc, brother better listen. Over to the big dawg himself...


Here at GFF HQ or, as we like to call it 'gffhq', things have been very busy indeed. We've had the tricky business of sifting through every weather forecast with the words Glastonbury in it, analysing the results & putting all this technical & highly complex data into our trusty ZX Spectrum - all whilst maintaining adequate stocks of all the other vital weather forecasting stuff you need in an international multi-discipline star studded meteorological office (seaweed, bees, oak & ash trees, gizzards & the like). And as if that wasn't enough, we've had to deal with our ever growing & increasingly A list fan base.

It's as if everyone on Elton John's birthday list has been banging away at our rear entrance trying to get at the goods, such has been the surge in interest. We've even had to turn away some of the early evictees fom Big Brother 3. Out in the street it's no different. I can be minding my own business in a well known supermarket, sizing up the courgettes & mulling over the latest rainfall figures from Peru when I'll feel a tap on my shoulder & someone will ask "Oy, global warming innit?"

Well my weather watching friends, there are important things to think about global warming, and I shall posit the notion that we should bloomin' well think them. Earlier this week, Saint Met Office of Bracknell produced, to great fanfare & acclaim, its long range forecast for Summer 2007 - the period that will almost certainly cover Glastonbury Festival. The most important thing about their long range forecast for Summer 2007 is that it had almost exactly the same words in it as the summary sentence announcing it's publication: likely to continue the warming trend of previous years, no indication of excessive heat or rainfall blah blah, yadda yadda. Today, the newspapers are full of "Phew, what a scorcher" stories predicting another very hot summer & the likelihood of droughts - probably derived from the Environment Agency's drought likelihood report, which does indeed point out that some areas are at risk from water shortages. Planning a wet t-shirt contest? Have it soon, milkytits. Have it soon...

Anyhow, so far so Arctic ice melting-tastic. Hang on though, how come Metcheck increased the likelihood of rain this week from 55 to 60%? How does that square with warming & a hot dry summer? How does that square with the whole global warming thing? Well, for one thing the summer proper won't really be here until July & August - & obviously we're interested in June, particularly the point when our 'monsoon' finishes - something Metcheck are still predicting for Glastonbury weekend. The other point is that global warming doesn't necessarily mean we will be always basking in Mediterranean sunshine. We're an island smack bang in the way of wet winds over the Atlantic heading eastwards. More warming means more evaporation from the sea, and warmer air capable of holding more moisture, meaning more moistness heading our way. Sure it'll be warm & wet instead of cold & wet, but still wet. The sort of storm we saw in 2005 doesn't help recharge underground water stores as it just flows staight into the rivers & streams, & a month of fine drizzle won't do much either, as it'll evaporate before it soaks in to the soil towards the water bearing rocks.

But wait, what's this? What's going on - just as we've been sitting down congratumalating ourselves on another stunning bit of weather info for our adoring public Metcheck try & pull a fast one. The sneaky bastards! It's as if they wanted to discredit us and make us look like stupid amateurs who are just making it all up. There it is, right there on their webpage, a little forecast with clogs on, well I declare shouting 45% chance of rain & 25 degrees. HEATWAVE - IT'S A HEATWAVE!! It is now officially more likely to not rain than it is to rain, and those high temperatures more than make up for it. Maybe they read the headlines & took note of The Weather Outlook website that predicts high pressure building from the south from the end of May. Maybe the threatening letters & nasty looks we've been giving them in the supermarket have worked. We'll keep stalking them on your behalf though, because they still have our monsoon ending at Glastonbury weekend. For now we'll believe them, mainly because we like the idea of warm & dry more than wet & cold, and The Slideometer is heading straight back to Michael 'Happychops' Eavis' smiling face on the right.

So there's your answer - we are going to have a nice Festival. In fact, it's going to be bloody lovely & we can drink beer in the sun till we fall over & go very pink. Every so often there might be a rumble of thunder & a sharp shower but on the whole, by and large, in a manner of speaking and suchlike, we're going to fry in our stinking filth encrusted festival pants. True, it might change. The people with all the numbers might change their minds & make it rain again, but for now we can rejoice & start buying suncream. Don't worry if the forecast changes. As it gets closer to Glastonbury time, if it looks like it's going be bad, we'll just lie, because it will make you feel better & happy, and that's what we at Glastonbury Festival Forecast are all about.

Labels: Glasto Festival Forecast, Sun, Warm