The Met Office has criticised a news site for “clickbait journalism” over a story about upcoming thunderstorms.
Taking a departure from predicting the weather, the forecaster posted a video on TikTok that blasted the “utter rubbish” warning from The Mirror urging people to “shut the curtains” during a rainy spell in England.
The Met Office has issued two yellow weather warnings for thunderstorms for parts of the country on Friday and Saturday, which could cause “some disruption”.
In response to this, a video – viewed more than 3 million times – was posted to the Mirror’s social media and captioned: “Exact date UK will get pummelled by rain as Met warns to shut curtains”.
Posting its own response on TikTok, the Met Office presenter said there was “so much wrong” with the Mirror’s video, and described the clip as “nonsense”.
Breaking it down, the presenter says: “Firstly, there isn’t even any exact date mentioned in the video… Secondly, it’s not always a heatwave we’re experiencing right now – it’s just a spell of fine, warm, dry weather that should be enjoyed if you like sunshine.”
Referring to “the curtains thing”, the presenter shared the Met Office’s own press release and video on the upcoming weather and said: “Check all of these and then go through all of our posts on TikTok and you won’t find a single mention of shutting your curtains at 4.30pm.”
The presenter points to the Met Office website that offers advice about closing curtains at dusk during cold weather to help keep houses warm – but said that they are not predicting any cold weather at the moment, and 4.30pm is not dusk either now or next month.
Wrapping up the video, which itself has had more than 500,000 views, the presenter says: “It’s just another example of clickbait journalism using weather stories to sell papers and get cheap clicks.
“No doubt there will be more of these kind of headlines in the months to come about how we’ll get 100 days of blizzards or 950-mile storm fronts that are set to batter the UK. Please don’t believe them.”
Yahoo News UK has contacted The Mirror for a response.
Much of the UK is currently experiencing warm weather – which the Met Office describes as “summer’s last hurrah” before heavy rainfall and thunderstorms are expected to drench the country over the weekend.
On Wednesday, temperatures hit 25.5C in Inverness, which is 14C above average for this time of year, according to the forecaster. Warm and bright conditions are continuing into Thursday after a cloudy morning – with highs of 26C in London, the weather service added.
Met Office meteorologist Dan Stroud said: “We are being spoiled by almost summer’s last hurrah, but there’s a bit of a change coming down the line as we move our way through towards Friday, and especially the weekend.”
Currently, the UK is experiencing a period of high pressure which will move north and east throughout the week, allowing “thundery showers” to develop in southern England from Friday, Stroud added.
A “gentle decline” in temperature is expected over the weekend, with highs of 24C forecast for East Anglia on Saturday followed by low 20s in the area on Sunday, he said.
Heavy downpours are expected across much of central and southern England and parts of Wales over the weekend, with the Met Office issuing yellow weather warnings for Friday and Saturday.
