Having just been away in the sun for a few days, I’ve discovered MoneySavingExpert.com has a bespoke new service for nerds, which even I hadn’t been told about. Quite remarkably, the site can now predict British Weather.
I first noticed the phenomena a couple of weeks ago, when between 1,200 and 1,700 people joined the email over the weekend, by far the lowest for any weekend this year. Now I decided this couldn’t be to do with the fact it was my wedding weekend, but instead to do with the hot weather.
After that we nipped away for a few days in the sun, yet first Thur then more so on Friday the number of sign-ups was much higher than the prior week, so without checking I sent the following nerdy email to my team:
“I thought I would try to predict that the weather yesterday was dreary and today is poor.
How? The only information i’m using is the number of sign-ups to the email list, which has been quite a bit higher the end part of this week than last week. While some is probably down to the great Tesco code in the Right Hand Side bar – I suspect the weather plays a big part.”
And indeed the rather disconsolate message came back that after the prior weekend’s sun, it was indeed now peeing it down.
So it seems, for obvious reasons, there’s a direct correlation between the number of people joining the distribution list for the weekly e-mail and the weather. If you’d like to use this new service you can see the number so far each day yourself in the stats section, bottom left of the home page. Then again, you may find this link even more useful.