AS A NATION we enjoy complaining about the weather, which is perhaps not surprising as we generally have a lot to complain about.

We’ve just had one of the worst winters on record and if the predictions of Huddersfield meteorologist Paul Stevens are correct, future winters are likely to be bleaker and colder, giving us plenty of reasons to moan.

“The mild and stormy winters we’ve had up to three years ago are over,” says Paul, a former Meteorological Office forecaster who now works independently. “We’re entering a cold phase with bad winters.”

Exactly why he thinks this requires a basic understanding of natural phenomena called jet streams – long, flowing ribbons of air, one of which, The Polar Jet Stream, was held responsible for last summer’s persistent cold and damp conditions.

Jet streams form because of temperature and pressure differences. Last summer the Polar Jet Stream, which ‘flows’ from west to east at between 100mph and 200mph and up to 17 kms high, was further south than it should have been and brought colder than average weather to the UK. The jet stream was also slower than normal, bringing low pressure and subsequent rainfall.

“There is a big debate as to why this happened,” says Paul, who helps businesses by producing tactical forecasts, “North Atlantic surface temperatures were higher than normal and the Pacific was average to colder, which would bend the jet stream.”

The slowing of the jet stream is also affected by the flow of the Gulf Stream, a deep ocean current which brings warmer water to the British Isles from the Gulf of Mexico. It is widely believed that the Gulf Stream will get slower over the next few decades and Britain will get cooler.

Paul explained the consequences: “For the last three or four years we have been getting less warm water in the North Atlantic and because of that the North Atlantic is going into a cold phase.”

Do we need to worry about the Gulf Stream being diverted entirely from our shores, launching northern Europe into a Day After Tomorrow scenario? In the movie, much of the Northern hemisphere was plunged into an ice age.

Paul said: “Conditions for that could happen at any time, in theory, and have happened in the past.

“But I think we need to be much more concerned about bad winters. We are now a net importer of energy so we’ve got to be really careful. We have got used to mild winters.”

While human activity is obviously the chief suspect in climate change and global warming, Paul says weather patterns do go through natural cycles.

“There is a 30 to 50 year series of warming and cooling,” he said. “Unfortunately, the earth’s weather can be unpredictable and affects everything and everyone.”

The recent spring snows, caused chaos and cost millions to business and agriculture (see panel). Paul himself suffered commercially as he runs a small florists, Inspirations, in the Salendine Nook Shopping Centre.

“There was a shortage of daffodils this year because the cold in Europe stopped them from growing,” he explained. “The only ones we could get were indoor grown. Flowers are a couple of weeks behind now and the snowy weather over Europe has made them a little bit more expensive.”

Many of the country’s major retailers use weather forecasts to plan sales tactics.

“Tactical forecasts are used by everyone from concrete companies and garden centres to supermarkets,” said Paul. “Supermarkets will put out the beers and barbecues if there is a sunny Bank Holiday forecast and will put out the shovels if snow is forecast.”

Steven Leigh, head of policy at the Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, says the recent bad weather had an understandably dramatic effect on businesses.

“It damaged the prospect for recovery in the first quarter of this year,” he said. “With snow on the ground for three weeks the whole economy slowed down. A lot of businesses will never recover the money they lost.”

The Examiner recently ran a story about a Pennine pub whose owners estimate that they lost as much as £20,000 through cancellations during the heavy snowfalls.

The cost of weather damage also comes out of the public purse. Potholes caused by snowfalls and heavy gritting, for example, are costing local authorities dearly. Kirklees’ budget for pothole repair in the past year was a whopping £700,000.

But how does Steven think businesses will react to increasingly poor winters?

“If there is evidence that the weather has changed and isn’t going back to the way it was then of course every business and entity – schools and so on – will have to adapt,” he said. “Other cultures have done this and are geared up to bad winters. In Denver, Colorado, for example they have a huge infrastructure to deal with it.

“But the difficulty is that if a business spends a lot of money preparing for bad winters and we have 10 years of mild winters then they’ve made a bad investment.

“The problem is that the British weather makes fools of all of us!”

The good news is that we may be in for a better summer than last year.

“The weather pattern at the moment is different from this time last year,” says Paul. “An Azores high (the Azores is a semi-permanent area of high pressure over the Atlantic) is getting much more established and settled.

“May is going to be warm, humid and wet but I think things will be drier by the end of June and July and August will be dryer and warmer.”

LAST summer’s overcast and rainy summer, combined with a long, late winter this year has created a “perfect storm” for farmers.

So says Holme Valley sheep farmer and National Farmers’ Union representative Robert Nobles.

“Last year was a terrible year and left some very, very poor crops, both arable and animal feed,” said Robert.

“All the rain last summer combined with the poor quality fodder have made it the perfect storm. Farmers haven’t had a lot going in their favour.

“A lot are trying to counter that with expensive supplementary feeds for their animals.”

Robert, who keeps lowland sheep and is the NFU’s group secretary based in Honley, says he was fortunate not to be caught out by the late snows this spring and suffered no losses.

“Most of my sheep were housed at the time but the snow was very badly timed with the ewes heavily in lamb and the lambs making a lot of demands on them,” he said.

“Farmers who keep hill breeds can’t really do much about the weather. The wild, hardy breeds don’t want to be inside – it’s stressful for them.”

To a large extent weather forecasts are of little use to livestock farmers who plan a season ahead.

“We have to put the rams with the ewes back in October or November and don’t know what the weather is going to be like in the spring,” said Robert. “This year a lot of people were caught out.

“The animals can survive the winter because the lambs are not making as much of a demand on the ewes but when the snow came in the spring they were near to lambing.”

Will this season’s late snows affect the price of lamb?

“We are not in a position to influence the head price,” explained Robert. “We are price takers rather than price makers.”

What severe winters will do, however, is to make farming an even tougher occupation than it already is.