The EUMETSAT Building here in Darmstadt, Germany, the headquarters of the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation, is a tall futuristic structure whose foyer is a large central atrium dominated by a giant television screen. One's first impression of the ambience might well be that created by Orwell's novel, 1984. "The big telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made above the level of a very low whisper could be picked up by it. Moreover, so long as he remained within its field of vision he could be seen as well as heard. There was, of course, no way of knowing if you were being watched at any given moment."
But the reality, as you may guess, is not like that at all. The EUMETSAT telescreen shows continuously a movie of the last dozen or so Meteosat satellite pictures, and you can follow in a time-lapsed sequence a speededup version of the last 12 hours or so of weather over Europe.
The most striking feature of the scene is always the mobility of the weather over northern latitudes. Even when there is cloud above the continent, it is patchy, and its progress rather slow. But further north one sees the full perpetual swirl of the circumpolar circulation, and right in the path of this near-continuous eastward-moving stream of cloud and rain and wind lies Ireland.
It brings home, of course, the differences between the weather here in Germany and that in Ireland. The most notable feature here, in any season, is the almost complete absence of wind. In wintertime, even in sub-zero temperatures, it does not feel too cold, because there is no wind; in summer one can sit outside in comfort even on a cloudy day, because there is no wind; and when it rains, the drops fall vertically down, again because there is no wind - which makes it quite ideal for umbrellas. Depressions rarely bring a decent breeze; the only gales we get come with a thunderstorm, and those are short. Unlike Ireland, too, the German weather knows precisely when it wants to rain. It clouds over relatively quickly, the rain starts and it is nearly always heavy, and when it stops the sun comes out again, and that is that. Drizzle is almost totally unknown, and there is none of this threatening to rain for days and days, but never quite succeeding.
But what would one not give, in the hot, oppressive, uncomfortably humid conditions of the Rhine valley in summer, for just one puff of the cool, deliciously salty, seaweed-perfumed Atlantic breeze that blows across the waves at Derrynane, Co Kerry.