Here is the forecast: it will be cold, starting around November, with occasional clouds, thickening sometimes to bring showers, thinning at others to give way to crisp, bright days that may incline those of a rambling bent to reach for their boots and chapstick. Overall, it will be drier than usual. Eventually, it will get warmer.

The above was brought to you by the Met Office, with the help of 3,000 diving Argo buoys. Like good journalists, but way out in the Atlantic, these buoys penetrate warm surface waters to take the temperature of what lies beneath. They have found evidence that a mildly negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) may be on its way and, with it, cold winds from Siberia.

Users of this long-term forecast, including Gazprom and the knitting industry, should note, however, a rival service from the Wet Office, which believes the impact of the NAO is customarily overstated and relies instead on its measurement of the thermal energy nexus (Then), located midway between Grand Canary and the hothouses of climate change debate in London and New York. A large fleet of jumping Ergo buoys deployed in this turbulent mid-Atlantic vortex, each with its own umbrella, has detected soaring surface temperatures and evaporation. On this basis the forecast is for warm, wet weather, deteriorating with the approach of Christmas to chilly wet weather, with the risk of extremely wet weather at any time, but especially between now and May 2008. A spokesman for the Wet Office said: “You don’t have to believe us but we do advise customers to be ready for everything. So why not invest in one of our attractive signature brollies just in case? If it doesn’t rain, you can always roll it up.”

Friends of the Met Office have complained that its competitor is taking all the fun out of forecasting by betting everything on rain. “On the contrary,” the Wet spokesman said. “When we’re wrong it must be dry, so people are still happy. We’ve now completed our north European forecast for the year and are off to do the same for St Kitts, Bermuda and Dubai.”