Why are the BBC weather maps on fire? Is it none too subtle climate propaganda?

It was back to northerly winds this morning where I live in the Fens, so much so that I had to go back upstairs and put on a thermal vest before venturing outside. But that’s not the impression you would have got from the weather map on last night’s BBC weather forecast.

Where I live was coloured a rather fetching shade of orange. Britain’s attempt at spring so far this year has been like a barrel of water sitting atop a camping stove – it has taken an age even to become lukewarm. But already the weather maps seem to depict scorching heat waves.

It turns out that BBC weather maps switch to yellow at a less than toasty 11 celsius and on to orange when the temperature is expected to reach 13 celsius. From 20 celsius upwards it is ever deeper shades of red. In the other direction, the weather only descends into blue when it is below freezing.

The BBC, to be fair, is not the only offender in this respect – and nor is it the worst. I have just been looking at Sky TV’s weather map for July 18 2022, which shows the entire western half of France, along with patches of southern England, apparently suffering under conditions of white heat.

The accompanying figures suggest that the temperature was going to be 38 celsius. Actual white heat, by the way, ensues when metals start to become incandescent at temperatures above 1500 celsius.

It is hard not to conclude that the BBC and others have been swept along by efforts to catastrophise the weather in order to exaggerate global warming.

It used to be tabloids with their “Phew, Wot a Scorcher” headlines which were accused of sensationalising ordinary British summer days. Now, every TV weather forecast seems to be at it. We have to be made to feel guilty whenever it is pleasant enough to sit outside in shirt sleeves.

Weather maps with lurid colours are part of an armoury of propaganda weapons designed to convince us that we are at 10 minutes to midnight in tackling climate change.

Another of those weapons is to use the word “normal” instead of “average”. “Temperatures are 50 degrees above normal in parts of Antarctica” may sound dramatic, yet in a continental climate like Antarctica it is perfectly normal to experience wild swings either side of average.

Naming storms is another trick. It used to be only hurricanes which had names; now it is any half-hearted squall. Hence we have all these references to a “record-breaking” stormy winter – based on the assertion that the Met Office chose to give a name to more Atlantic depressions than in any of the other nine winters it has using the practice.

The BBC’s own explanation for the colours in its weather maps – that they have been redesigned in order to help viewers with colour-blindness – seems a little odd given that the most common form of the condition comes with people being unable properly to see reds and greens. That would make it difficult for sufferers to see temperatures between 3 and 10 degrees and anything over 20 degrees.

It makes you pine for the days of black and white television (which lasted until 1983 in my house), when weather forecasters were stuck with monochrome, magnetic symbols. That is how I remember the 1976 heatwave – as something to be enjoyed rather than feared.

I hate to think how it would be depicted on weather forecasts now.