|
The
weather has been a source of inspiration, frustration and wonder
to writers and commentators, scientists and lay people alike. And
their comments and quips have been preserved for posterity.
Big whirls have little whirls what feed on their velocity, little
whirls have smaller whirls, and so on to viscosity. |
| LF
Richardson |
My
personal favourite comes from Benjamin Franklin - he who invented
the lightning conductor. He once said:
"Whilst
some people are weatherwise, most are otherwise".
He
may have said that more than 100 years ago but it holds true today.
Franklin
was an American scientist but our own L.F. Richardson penned this
little ditty:
Big
whirls have little whirls what feed on their velocity, little whirls
have smaller whirls, and so on to viscosity.
William
Shakespeare found the weather elements to be a source of inspiration,
as in this extract from King Lear:
"Blow,
winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!"
 |
| "Whilst
some people are weatherwise, most are otherwise." |
That
great American writer Mark Twain penned many weather witticisms:
"A
great, great deal has been said, about the weather, but very little
has ever been done."
And…
"Cold!
If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen
to death!"
A contemporary
of Twain was Jerome K. Jerome who said:
"The
weather is like the government, always in the wrong."
But
as the American humorist Kin Hubbard once said:
"Don't
knock the weather, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation
if it didn't change once in a while."
And
I have to agree with John Ruskin that our weather is something to
celebrate, not complain about:
"Sunshine
is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating;
there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds
of good weather."
by
Richard Angwin
|
