A weather enthusiast from Sheffield has launched a website designed to answer a common household dilemma: whether conditions are right for hanging washing outside. Stephen Vincent created the Washing Line Index, which uses live forecast data to generate drying scores for locations across the UK, aiming to give people clear, jargon-free guidance rather than technical or sensationalist weather reporting.

The site produces a "shirt rating" and a drying score out of 100, calculated from factors such as sunshine, rain, humidity, wind and temperature, with separate forecasts for morning and afternoon since conditions can change through the day. Users simply enter their postcode to get a result. The tool grew out of Vincent's earlier project, Steel City Skies, where a five-shirt rating system for washing-day suitability proved popular before he developed it into this standalone service.