Erroneous weather forecasting has been causing quite the commotion in Birmingham: having to pack umbrellas and wear enormous padded, hooded coats in the morning to prepare for 90% of rain, but having to come home carrying the extra, unnecessary weight of a coat on your arm and an umbrella buried in your bag whilst the sun is out.

Alas, students who walk considerable distances from home to school every day suffer greatly from erroneous weather forecasting – a student from the Phoenix Collegiate says that she checks the weather “every night” because the clothes she chooses to wear “depend on the weather.” She wears “warm clothes to prepare for the cold” but ends up “getting hot” as she walks home under the scalding sun after school, whereas on “days that the forecast says no rain”, she wears light clothing, “but the clothes and books in the backpack end up getting ruined by the rain”.

The unpredictability of the weather is also cause for the quick spread of sickness, as the student remarks, “I get wet, I get sick.” Her continuous trust in weather forecasting services has rendered her helpless – “I’ve already been sick twice since school started”, she says. Individuals that take the bus are, too, inconvenienced by this unpredictability of the weather, as another student says, sometimes having to wait for “over half an hour at the bus stop” wearing “the lightest piece of clothing” they own whilst the rain continues raging on. “Not all bus stops have roofs either”, she adds.

The commotion lies in the fact that these individuals are, ultimately, helpless, having to walk to and from school every day, regardless of the weather conditions or being unable to take the day off lest it impacts their education. Perhaps we will have to learn to just live with it after all.