Dorset residents obliged to endure the continuing heatwave - "the hottest heatwave since the last hottest heatwave"*, Motcombe Amateur Meterological Monthly) - were left perplexed yesterday when rival meteorological authorities predicted wholly different scenarios arising from the arrival of Hurricane Brian later this week. The RDMS (Royal Dorset Meteorological Service) declared that the freak hurricane (recently downgraded to a Tropical Storm) would "intensify and prolong the hot dry spell", whilst The TIMES (Thrupiece Interactive Meterological Events Services) suggested that "torrential rain will flood the county and bring rapidly plunging temperatures in it wake".
* Possibly the Great Drought of 1976 or the "Not So Great Drought of 1987". "It depends on your methodology" see Professor Brian Thrupiece: "You Say Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate and I Say Moist Adiabatic Lapse Rate: Competing Methodologies in Meteorological Classification" The Threadbone Press 1998)
So what should beleaguered residents expect in the coming days? Speaking for the wholly independent TMFAA (Threadbone Meteorological Forecast Arbitration Agency), experts Dr Cy Clone and his assistant Harry Cain (no relation) said that the consequences of the storm (recently downgraded to "Quite A Strong Wind") could well be "unpredictable, as meteorological events often are". "I mean you know from your own experience that you can wake up in the morning and sometimes its hot and sometimes its cold, or it can be wet or it can be dry - it all depends on what we call the weather and that is by its very nature unpredictable", Dr Clone said. "Anyone who can accurately predict the weather could probably make a full time profession of it and probably quite a decent living", he added.
In the meantime worried residents of Gussage St. Andrew are taking no chances: "I've bought an umbrella that can double as a parasol and a water butt which can either channel the torrential rain off the roof or act as a very nice receptacle for y mother-in-law when the time comes. Either ways I am quids in." **
** Available from Threadbonemeals Garden Centres (HERE) £89.99 plus VAT and delivery (pipework excluded, maximum 6 per customer no returns). Not certified for human storage - use at own risk.
Amateur Meteorologist Mervyn Wierd-Person who uses freeze-dried salamanders to predict long term weather trends said that Hurricane Brian (recently downgraded to an "intermittent breeze", would "pass over largely unnoticed by most people". "Only one-in-four freeze-dried salamanders could register a difference and that's a pretty low threshold in my experience", he told Purse Caundle social services.
Hurricane Brian is due to hit Dorset later this week with wholly unknown and unforeseen consequence. The public has been advised by the Threadbone Extra supermarket chain to stock up and do twice the normally weekly shop, "just in case profits fall later in the year".
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