Met office eh???? What a bunch of hosers.

photodog

photodog

Lord High Commander of Upper Broughton and Gunthor
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Anyways... Been watching the forecasts... And today according to them it was supposed to be pissing it down and quite windy... The inshore has a bleeding F7 in it...

So what's the weather actually like??

sunny with a bit of overcast, warm... F3 or 4.

And we are in the marina doing laundry.
 
F8 in the Thames and Dover forecast! and right on the nose for Calais, sat on mooring on Orwell waiting for an improvement, still, went for swim, drank some beer, ate some stuff, read, typed some **** on here.
Tomorrow looks better.
 
Habebty said:
F8 in the Thames and Dover forecast! and right on the nose for Calais, sat on mooring on Orwell waiting for an improvement, still, went for swim, drank some beer, ate some stuff, read, typed some **** on here.
Tomorrow looks better.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I saw that 8 in the mornings forecast.. They have dropped it to a seven... We are down at shotley and it's been a lovely day so far.... Drive up to asda for a quick top up and saw a few spots of rain...
 
They were giving SW 4-5 increasing 7-9 for down here this morning. So far nothing above 20kn in the Solent.
Both kids crewing on an E-Boat in Cowes Week so taking a bit of an interest in the weather.
 
photodog said:
Anyways... Been watching the forecasts... And today according to them it was supposed to be pissing it down and quite windy... The inshore has a bleeding F7 in it...

So what's the weather actually like??

sunny with a bit of overcast, warm... F3 or 4.

And we are in the marina doing laundry.
Click to expand...

Much as I also get frustrated by overly pessimistic forecasts, I don't think your ire is pointed in the right direction.

The MO almost certainly got it spot on, and their model is just as good as the US ones we can get GRIBS for, and I've found GRIBs very accurate for several days out. However consider what happens: the MO produce a model which is highly statistical with associated probabilities, on a grid around 25km across and with time intervals of 6hrs or so. This is condensed and interpreted by either

(i) the TV companies into 30 seconds for the whole of the UK for the whole of a day for an audience who are only interested in whether to buy more wife-beater on the way home, or

(ii) the MCA with the following filter; take the maximum it's >10% likely to be over the whole sea area (which is more like 200km across) over the whole 24 hour forecast period(1). Not surprising it's on average pessimistic where you are. And they allow only a paltry couple of minutes to the shipping forecast for the whole sea from Tarfalgar to Utsire, which isn't a Met Office decision but the BBC's, so no time for 'less strong in the east solent' type nuances.

(1) This '>10% likely' interpretation is not shared by everyone I have to admit, but nonetheless I bet it's true to some extent. remember how un-forecast gales get the BBC and MCA a bad press so they are bound to be encouraged by the Daily Wail readers to be over-pessimistic.
 
Forcast overcast with sunny intervals here in NW Highlands-actually at 7.pm clear skies hot and sunny-not rained all day with several short overcast periods-lovely day.
 
jdc said:
Much as I also get frustrated by overly pessimistic forecasts, I don't think your ire is pointed in the right direction.

The MO almost certainly got it spot on, and their model is just as good as the US ones we can get GRIBS for, and I've found GRIBs very accurate for several days out. However consider what happens: the MO produce a model which is highly statistical with associated probabilities, on a grid around 25km across and with time intervals of 6hrs or so. This is condensed and interpreted by either

(i) the TV companies into 30 seconds for the whole of the UK for the whole of a day for an audience who are only interested in whether to buy more wife-beater on the way home, or

(ii) the MCA with the following filter; take the maximum it's >10% likely to be over the whole sea area (which is more like 200km across) over the whole 24 hour forecast period(1). Not surprising it's on average pessimistic where you are. And they allow only a paltry couple of minutes to the shipping forecast for the whole sea from Tarfalgar to Utsire, which isn't a Met Office decision but the BBC's, so no time for 'less strong in the east solent' type nuances.

(1) This '>10% likely' interpretation is not shared by everyone I have to admit, but nonetheless I bet it's true to some extent. remember how un-forecast gales get the BBC and MCA a bad press so they are bound to be encouraged by the Daily Wail readers to be over-pessimistic.
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This is a forecast obtained from the met offices own website.

I dont understand why I can get a better higher resolution forecast from
A free online service than I can from our very well funded taxpayer financed public service which surely must have similar data.... Why don't they want to give us this information? Why do they persist with
Providing a service which is uncompetitive?

The inshore waters forecast on their website is now a joke.... The resolution is no where near to fine enough.
 
photodog said:
So what's the weather actually like??

sunny with a bit of overcast, warm... F3 or 4.
Click to expand...

Only because I'm now back at work! :-(

(ps You were right on Saturday at Hamford Water about the wind dropping after 4pm. After wondering whether it would calm down enough for us to tackle getting back into the Deben, we had to motor there!)
 
LittleSister said:
Only because I'm now back at work! :-(

(ps You were right on Saturday at Hamford Water about the wind dropping after 4pm. After wondering whether it would calm down enough for us to tackle getting back into the Deben, we had to motor there!)
Click to expand...

I noticed you had dissapeared! It kicked up to 25knots around 4.30 but by 7 was all gone and we had a lovely peacefully
Night... I was surprised!

Swmbo spent the day watching the seals.... So a good time was had by all, and Sunday am was fantastic, wind filled from about 9 or so and we had a great run back up the stour with the entire Birmingham navy...
 
Bloody weather!

Well, we enjoyed watching the seals and birds, but spent the first half of the week's holiday (after weeks baking in the office) at anchor bouncing around in the wind/tide and stuck in the Deben. Then having run out of water, and with yet another day's rain forecast, we returned home to regroup. Work stuff and loss of wallet intervened and delayed our return to the boat, so we spent the glorious weather of Thursday mainly indoors at home. Eventually back to the boat, torrential rain and lightning on the way over to Walton, and then another day or two bouncing around in the wind at anchor. We didn't get the main up all week! Began to see the appeal of a week's package in Torremelinos, or a coach tour of Belgium.:(
 
It is frustrating indeed when the forecasts delivered are miles out. However, weather forecasting is a success story. The raw forecasts which are produced are reasonably accurate, and the granularity and distance they can into the future they can go have increased dramatically over the years. Better models and, not least, hefty compute power have enabled enormous progress.

But what happens to the forecast before you get it. The anxiety about failing to predict severe weather means that it is put into the forecast if there is even a pretty low probability. I have read that predicted probabilities of rain are routinely massaged for public consumption. E.g., Always changing a 0% to 10% so that you can't be wrong, and people then feel lucky if they see no rain. Never using 50% because it looks like you can't make your mind up - change it to 40% or 60% and so on. The weather forecasters are damned good at their job (and by the way, in some UK positions whether they get it right affects their pay!). The trouble is that the media seem to let the horoscope writers edit the raw forecasts.
 
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