ok paul, no rain for Swansea today according to aol, so it's no waterproofs and my nice shiny new bike. After yesterdays forcast by the Met, I was going to take my grubby bike and best waterproofs!
, but of course some people will always on the boundaries between two different weather areas so for them it can be wrong.
I think you could well be right. Forecasting is actually mostly done from previous weather patterns, the history for each nearest pattern located from their computers and repeated as the forecast.
That or people have rose tinted glasses about how accurate weather forecasts used to be. I saw an interview with Michael Fish recently where he said forecasts are far more accurate now than they were in 1987, of course he would say that but I believe him.
Wasn't that the year he got it wrong big time though, about that really bad storm that hit the south?That or people have rode tinted glasses about how accurate weather forecasts used to be. I saw an interview with Michael Fish recently where he said forecasts are far more accurate now than they were in 1987, of course he would say that but I believe him.
He was talking about forecasting in the 80s generally, I picked '87 as that's when a tree fell on my school and I blame him.
I agree that today's are generally more accurate than the 1980s and before. The problem I see is that we are increasingly getting some odd variations and extremes in the weather, and when those crop up, the forecast error can be more extreme than it was in the past. It's larger errors that people tend to notice more.That or people have rose tinted glasses about how accurate weather forecasts used to be. I saw an interview with Michael Fish recently where he said forecasts are far more accurate now than they were in 1987, of course he would say that but I believe him.
No it's not! I think that's one of Flecc's little teases
A bit before my time but I wonder how people would have felt after: August 1952, the Lynmouth disaster after hours of heavy rain on Exmoor; December 1952, the famous 5 day London Smog; January 1953 the North Sea Floods and the sinking of the Princess Victoria off Stranraer, both caused by storm force winds round a deep depression.
Not a tease, but I meant the same thing. These observations building up the pattern of the atmosphere's state are related to the computer history over the approximately 250 years of garnered information and from that the individual land patterns are forecast from the nearest past pattern. That's why the moving map is able to show the individual cloud patterns related to terrain etc. in fine detail, something that cannot be gained from atmospheric readings alone. This is according the Met Office forecasters who have said that well into the future as a more detailed and longer history is built up, forecasting will become much more locally accurate.No it's not! I think that's one of Flecc's little teases
Manual forecasters may have used that technique amongst others but with computers its different.
They garner together all the observations from land, sea, air and satellite at an agreed time, e.g. midnight GMT - it's a worldwide collaboration - then form a model of the state of the atmosphere at that instant, called the "Initial State". Then, with as much physics as they can cram into the model, the model goes forward in time and they see how the state evolves. Each model run starts afresh.
These were fairly consistent with what had been forecast, though the degree of the effects were more severe. The complaint about the 1987 storm related forecast was the way any idea if it happening was dismissed just before, so the forecasting error huge, hence my using it as an example.
