Helping set up a stall at a local market on Saturday, a brief shower of rain came through; not enough to dampen the spirits but certainly enough to cause panic.

One of the stallholders checked the weather app on his phone and raced from one stall to another to show us all that this particular shower of rain (which was now easing) was not on the radar. The other stallholders checked their weather apps and surprise, surprise, the rain hadn’t shown up on theirs either.

How on earth could this be? A lengthy stallholder discussion followed about why nobody knew about this shower of rain (which had now stopped). It was a conversation I wanted to join just so that I could say that the brief shower had shown up on my radar because five minutes before it arrived, I had looked skyward. But I chose to keep schtum because all sorts of nasty stuff can happen if you get stallholders off side.

When did this addiction to weather-checking start? I have friends who spend hours looking at the Bureau of Meteorology radar. They seem stressed. One will call to tell me that there’s heavy rain out west and there’s a 15 per cent chance it’s headed our way. I’m not in a flood prone area, so I’m not sure what to do with this information? Gather pairs of animals from the surrounding suburbs so that we have a gene pool to work with?

And the wording around weather has changed. Nowadays, there is no such thing as just “the weather”, it’s called a “weather event” or a “weather alert”. And we don’t seem to get heavy showers anymore. Instead, there’s a RAIN BOMB on the way! Sure, we’ve had our fair share of pretty dramatic weather over the last few years and I’m happy to put floods, cyclones and hail the size of something you could play sport with in the “weather event” basket, but a small squall in the Hawkesbury is not a “weather event”. Nor is it news that needs to be broken to us and we don’t need an alert about it.

I can’t help but think that these carefully chosen words – event, breaking news, and alert – are exactly that - carefully chosen words to fuel our already heightened post-pandemic anxiety. Throw another “breaking news alert about a weather event” on the fire and let’s watch everyone scramble to their weather apps to check the forecast.

Some might say that scrolling through the weather along the east coast is a form of meditation? I disagree. From the looks on the faces of the stallholders when a passing shower snuck underneath the radar, it is anxiety provoking. There they were – all looking at their phones telling each other that it was raining and predicting how long the shower was going to last for. None of them were right, of course. One lady said that it would last “an hour and a half and that there was nothing behind it” making the passing shower sound like someone trying to sneak something (or someone) into their bedroom.

Speaking of the weather, my eldest daughter’s christening day was held on a stinking hot day in February. An uncomfortably hot day. Everyone was dripping with sweat. Babies were unsettled. New parents were frazzled. The salads wilted. The toddlers tantrummed. The elderly priest’s newly dyed hair ran – Rudy Giuliani-style – in huge black drips onto his forehead.