The British weather is a constant inspiration for conversation, but recently the topic of the weather has been elevated to headline news status. Despite suffering draught sanctions in many areas, Britain has seen excessive levels of rain, and flood warnings have been issued. Officially we have endured the wettest April showers since records began in 1910.

Someone said last week, “It’s the wettest draught on record!”

On more than one occasion race meetings have been lost to water-logged courses. It’s May for goodness sake!

With all the talk of rain and unseasonally damp conditions, it’s hardly surprising that many people, including us punters, have been asking “whatever happened to global warming?” Where’s the sun?

I was watching a program on the Discovery Channel the other day which went some way to answering that question. And it also got me thinking how we can draw several parallels between the weather and betting on horse racing.

The chap on the telly was explaining how we should not be confusing the weather with the climate. He said it was was not surprising the wet period has raised questions over climate change – but the rainy weather should not be used as evidence against it.

”It’s no surprise that people look out of their window at the persistent rain and find it hard to rationalise what’s going on with the longer term trend.”

But he said it was wrong to focus on single events – whether they were cold snaps or heat waves – which were the product of natural variability. Instead they should look at the underlying, longer term trends for the climate which were more robust evidence of the changes which are happening.

The last decade was the warmest on record, with the last three each warmer than the previous 10 years.

The Met Office has reported that April’s wet weather was within the bounds of natural variability within a global trend of extended hours of sunshine – in which 2011 was the fifth warmest year on record. Despite record levels of rainfall in April, the country has experienced largely dry periods for the past two years, resulting in the depletion of our reservoirs.

”If you look at the temperature graph for the UK or the world, it is a series of peaks and troughs and there’s a lot of inter-annual variability within the climbing trend.”

So how does this relate to betting on horse racing?

Weather systems consist of many variables to produce a result. Air temperature, atmospheric pressure, prevailing winds and many other influences combine to dictate whether it rains over a particular area, or sends people running for the sun-cream. On the face of it, weather systems may appear to be completely random and chaotic events. On the face of it, a horse race may appear to be the same. A group of horses, each with four legs, sets off on a race.

The outcome of a horse race is also influenced by a number of variables – the fitness of each horse, the going, the distance, the jockey, the pattern of the race, luck in running, and so on. That is the challenge of racing we all relish. But we relish that challenge because ultimately we think the puzzle can be solved. And similarly, for many years meteorologists have engaged in the pursuit of predicting the weather.

What lesson can we learn from observing the weather?

The extraordinary wet weather we have experienced of late is simply a departure from the norm, but within the bounds of variability. Just because we haven’t seen blue sky for a few weeks, it doesn’t mean Britain now has a monsoon season. It is important we step back and observe the bigger picture, setting the recent wet weather in context with the rise in average sunshine hours over the last thirty years.

We should should exercise the same objectivity when we are betting. A losing day, week, or even month should not necessarily be cause to set alarm bells ringing. Equally, trialling a system for a week and seeing a profit should not be immediately followed by investing headlong with full stakes.

Knee-jerk reactions to short-term results will often lead to poor decision-making.

On this site we tend to trial a system for a month, or thirty “betting days” if the system is more selective. If the system returns a profit, we will generally recommend it worthy of further evaluation, but only further evaluation.

Personally, I would not be remotely tempted to start investing properly in any system until I was happy with the returns from at least 250 separate bets. Michael Wilding at Race Advisor suggests testing a betting system until you have 100 winners.

If you like, data from 250 bets will give you an indication of the climate of the system in question. Any amount of data much less than this will simply tell you what the weather is doing at a particular period in time.

The lesson is to test a betting system, method, or strategy for a significant period of time before coming to any conclusions.

By leaving comments below, tell me, how long do you typically test a system before using your normal stakes? Are you a cautious bettor, or will you happily jump straight in with big money?