84. There are warnings of gales in all areas

Greetings, friends. A few nights ago, I was lying in bed, eyelids getting heavy, while listening to my favorite soporific:

There are warnings of gales in all areas… The area forecasts for the next 24 hours: Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire. Southerly 4 to 6, backing southeasterly 7 to severe gale 9, veering southwest gale 8 to storm 10 later, showers, rain later, good, occasionally poor… Shannon. Cyclonic, storm 10 to hurricane force 12, becoming west, gale 8…

My eyes shot open. Hurricane force 12?

In seven years of listening, I’d never once heard the phrase “hurricane force 12”. Holy shit. The Beaufort scale doesn’t go any higher than twelve.

Ireland was in for it.

The recording I was listening to was, of course, the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of the Shipping Forecast, “brought to you by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.” Thus has Beeb kept the United Kingdom’s radio-listening public apprised of the maritime weather and safety conditions in the North Atlantic, like clockwork, every single day at 12:48am and 5:20am BST, for the last one hundred years.

I would have a hard time expressing the depth of my appreciation for this noble institution of meteorological forecasting, the Shipping Forecast. You might find it difficult to believe, given that I barely live within 5,000 miles of the North Sea. And, indeed, most days I don’t care about the actual weather in the North Sea.

What I do care about, primarily, is the delivery of this particular weather report. The even, steady cadence of the BBC radio announcer. The rigidly formulaic structure of the broadcast, unvarying from one night to the next, like a Mass, or the prolegomena to a Torah service. The content of the report itself, enumerating places at once familiar and exotic, with meteorological information packed so densely as to resemble the coded transmissions of a Cold War numbers station. The result is positively hypnotic.

The broadcast has a kind of aura of nostalgia for many in the British Isles whom it has soothed to sleep, starting at precisely 12:48am BST every night. The midnight broadcast is even prefaced with its own musical theme, a stately, waltzing serenade, evocatively titled “Sailing By”.

Nothing like the Shipping Forecast has ever been broadcast here in the United States, not that I am aware of. It’s just so… English. I happened across it on YouTube back in late 2017 when my mental health was in a bad spot. I had been having trouble sleeping, and was desperate for any non-medical aid I could find, to distract my brain squirrels long enough for me to get some rest.

The Shipping Forecast was an ideal remedy. The droning words of the radio announcer are English and familiar enough, but, if you’re unacquainted with the extremely concise format of the forecast, their gestalt is devoid of meaning. The net effect is that of pleasantly soporific gibberish. The waking mind just slides right off.

Listening to old recordings on YouTube worked great for me for a few nights, but the limited supply on YouTube meant that I was soon reduced to listening to the same forecasts over and over. Yes, the BBC post every report online, but you can only play them one at a time. I decided to make my own archive, by recording the Radio 4 Internet feed at the appointed times of day. That was about seven years ago.

Today, I have over 7,000 recordings of Shipping Forecast broadcasts, totaling over 900 hours of audio, which works out to nearly 40 continuous days’ listening… and still counting. It’s probably bending some copyright or trademark for me to host these things, but so far no cease & desist letter has arrived.

The archive’s web address — gale8.net — is a tribute to the format of the weather predictions. The Shipping Forecast gives wind speed predictions along the Beaufort scale, which was devised by a Royal Navy officer named, wait for it, Beaufort, back in the 19th Century:

The initial scale of 13 classes (zero to 12) did not reference wind speed numbers, but related qualitative wind conditions to effects on the sails of a frigate… from "just sufficient to give steerage" to "that which no canvas sails could withstand".

The scale was later empirically converted to wind speed ranges. The Forecast adds some oomph to wind conditions over 40 miles an hour by emphasizing them by name: Gale 8. Severe gale 9. Storm 10. Violent storm 11. And, the one that disturbed my drowsing the other night: Hurricane force 12.

Plainly, if you are an insomniac and not actually a mariner, it’s actually better not to understand the format. Otherwise you may find yourself unintentionally drawn into visualizing North Sea weather patterns, rather than falling asleep. Ask me how I know.

So I won’t burden you with the delightful details — Wikipedia covers them in excellent depth, and the Met Office has a lovely video on the Forecast’s history:

I’ll also spare you the technical details of managing the gale8.net archive, which has been surprisingly difficult, what with international time zones, twice-annual daylight savings changes, geographic licensing restrictions, fluctuating feed locations and digital audio formats and even radio broadcast bands, plus my own spit-and-bailing-wire approach to writing software, and, not least of all, the historically unprecedented and pandemic-driven alterations in Radio 4’s broadcast schedule.

Over the past century, the Shipping Forecast has become such a mainstay of British culture that it is a regular subject of nostalgic tribute and winking parody. My first unwitting encounter with the Forecast was many years ago, long before I knew what it was, in Blur’s “This Is A Low”. Stephen Fry does a pretty good send up of the Forecast, but Brian Perkins’s is better.

I even made my own tribute, an entry in Ellen Juhlin’s Audio Garden exhibition in San Francisco, back in 2019, in the form of an immersive, narrative sound piece, titled (unimaginatively) “And now, the Shipping Forecast”.

If you don’t have the patience for the full 52 minute audio journey — as who would — I invite you to give a listen to the 3 minute psychedelic middle section, ideally with headphones. Please indulge me, if you will. It took wayyy too long to make, and I’m unreasonably proud of just how weird it came out.

I mean, what else would you do with hundreds of hours of weather forecast recordings? No, seriously. I’d love to hear suggestions.

Although it is probably untrue, I have read that British ballistic missile submarines have orders, in the event that they lose contact with headquarters, to tune into BBC Radio 4.

No Shipping Forecast at 00:48 and none again at 05:20? ‘Bout that time, eh, chaps? Right-o.

Speaking of ze end of the ze world, Ireland did indeed experience record winds this week, with gusts on the coast reaching 114 mph (183 kph). Three quarters of a million people lost electrical power, and half of them were still waiting for it to be restored as of yesterday. It’s a testament to the efficacy of modern building codes that the only loss of life occurred outdoors. Unfortunately, in our world today, this kind of “generational storm” is going to happen more often and not less.

Which is why I’m grateful to the BBC, the UK Met Office, and Maritime and Coastguard Agency, for something to help me get to sleep at night.

If you’re still reading this, I send you my love. Ceterum censeo vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. And that concludes this entry of Greetings, Friends, which brings us to the end of this email. Good night, everyone, and pleasant dreams.