Express weather is not like normal weather. It’s not the weather we experience, or at least not yet. Express weather is what you might encounter on Mars or Venus: extreme heat or extreme cold interspersed with wild storms.

That its predictions are as contradictory as they are bizarre and that they seldom come to pass seems to deter their repetition not one jot. The newspaper appears to assume that its readers have thistledown memories: no recollection of the predictions it made even a few days before. Given that people continue to buy this rubbish, it may, unfortunately, be right.

So, on 16 March, its front page told us “Britain set for HOTTEST Easter EVER as temperatures to rocket to 80F in holiday heatwave”. Needless to say, the story was helpfully illustrated with pictures of young women in bikinis, in case we could not otherwise imagine what a heatwave might be like. On 26 March, this public service was followed by “Easter weather forecast: TEN inches of snow, gales and plummeting temps.” The same journalist, Nathan Rao, wrote both articles.

Today, the man most frequently cited in improbable weather stories in the Express (and sometimes elsewhere) is James Madden, who runs a company called Exacta Weather. His wild predictions have formed the basis of Express stories for several years, and appear in several of those I’ve just mentioned. So I sent him a list of questions. (I also sent a list to the newspaper, but have not received a response). Instead of specific answers, he sent me a note that seemed to me to consist largely of bluster and threats.