Bad weather is still bad weather, however you predict it

I wouldn’t fancy being one of those trees trying to stand up in that

My Dad was shouting, 'ay up, int it code?' to anyone walking by, which I find is a good test to work out if they’re locals or not.

This odd weather should be easier to predict in the future now that the Met Office is to be given £1 billion to build a supercomputer.

That seems like a lot of money for a computer, or it seems about right if you want to buy an Apple one.

They claim that this new beast will be six times more powerful than the supercomputer they currently use.

Even so, I bet it hangs for ages when it gets to 99 per cent on the Windows update.

At the moment we have the technology to predict weather in 1.5 square kilometres, but the new system will make that 100 square metres.

They’ll be able to predict the weather on a street-by-street basis.

The weather forecast will take ages doing it that way.

ITV will be half an hour late for Coronation Street and the weather person will have only done the Carsic Estate.

I am all for technological advancement but in my experience the weather on one street is pretty much the same as the weather on the next.

And if I ever find myself one street away from nice weather, I can walk over there.

The problem is that £1 billion would make a big difference in helping those who have flooding in their homes when the extreme weather hits.

A computer will let them know it’s coming earlier but it won’t stop the flood.

It means people can move things on to higher shelves with less of a rush.

A new computer will give better weather warnings but people don’t listen to them.

Michael Fish messed up in the 80's and now we don’t believe anything they say.

All that money spent telling us that bad weather is on the way and people will still stay in their home.

My worry is that we won’t spend the money stopping floods, we will spend it all on a fancy computer and then after a really bad storm hits there will be a chance that the flood will

damage the Met Office computer.

And then what?

All we can hope is that the Met Office computer stores all its data in the cloud.

Steve N Allen is a comedian and broadcaster who was raised in Sutton-in-Ashfield.