ACCORDING to Billy Connolly, there is no such thing as bad weather in Scotland, just the wrong sort of clothes.

It is, after all, a country that is famed for having four different seasons before breakfast, followed by at least another eight before dinner, sometimes all at once.

Our “interesting” weather is something we all get used to, and we even wear it as a badge of honour when our neighbours south of the border struggle in half an inch of snow.

But recently, our weather has taken a rather sinister turn which has seen the rail network suspended, schools closed and folk advised to stay indoors and hide under the table to stay safe.

The reason that we now seem to be totally terrified of weather and go into full scale panic can be directly correlated with the introduction of named storms.

It appears that every squally shower- laden cloud barrelling across the Atlantic now has the potential to kill, whereas previous generations would regard it as a good drying day and hang out the washing.

Scotland has lived with storms coming in from the Atlantic for thousands of years.

Storms have helped shape the nation’s geography, topography and almost certainly our famed dry sense of humour, too.

It is as much as a fabric of Scottish life as anything else – so why are we now so scared of every breath of wind that blows in from Newfoundland?

Named storms are certainly part of the problem, as they can be over-hyped to such an extent that people stock up on rice, pasta and toilet paper and call in sick to work for days.

Officials help to drive this panic, with ministers setting up emergency resilience meetings and closing everything down ahead of the worst storm this millennia/century/decade/year/week steaming in.

Last week we saw four named storms blow in which had the doom-mongers salivating at the fact it was the first time EVER that four named storms had come in just seven days.

Rolling news channels sent reporters out to some pretty ropey spots like the end of a pier to report live on how windy it was.

The green lobby was positively buzzing, as this proved that the climate crisis was here on our shores and it’s only going to get worse.

In truth, the hyperbole was flying around much more dangerously than the odd wheelie bin caught up in Eunice’s slipstream.

But are we really suffering from much harsher weather or have we just become a nation of pampered softies who no longer have the resilience to act appropriately in a storm?

Scotland sits as part of an island in the North Atlantic Ocean and has done for millions of years.

Head north from Muckle Flugga at the top of Unst in Shetland and there is not much apart from big waves until you hit the North Pole.

We live pretty far north in global terms and we are about as far from the Equator as it’s possible to get.

But judging by the panic that set in last week, half the population seem to think we have somehow floated south and are actually positioned near Corfu, just off the mainland of Greece.

The BBC did its very best to instil panic with live interviews from people caught up in the eye of Storm Eunice.

That was until Radio 2 interviewed a man from Wales who said: “To be honest, I’ve played golf in worse.”

That, in a nutshell, sums it up, as we’ve probably all played golf in worse than the recent named storms.

This year alone we’ve had Storm Arwen, Barra, Corrie, Dudley, Eunice and Franklin.

Interestingly, there was also a Storm Malik in between, which I don’t know if it was from last year and was just really slow and got overtaken or lightning quick and was actually due to arrive in April.

Sadly, some unfortunate souls lost their lives in them while thousands were left without power for days or suffered storm damage to their homes.

This is a tragic drawback of stormy weather, but is something we have been dealing with for centuries.

All of us can regale stories from big storms of years ago, but none of them had a name and there were no danger to life warnings issued.

That is almost certainly down to the fact that we used our common sense. We looked out of the window, saw it was brutal, and stayed indoors.

Many of us did the same last week, as looking out of your window remains the best method of gauging whether it’s worth going outside or not.

But in this risk-averse society where folk seem to have lost all common sense, many now need a name and a dire warning too.