The Met Office or Me have something wrong?

iangrant

iangrant

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I understood that the lines on a synoptic chart had to be close together, (matching the nice scale on the corner of the chart, not too difficult) for there to be a big blow, They are not close together on the current chart but the 1700 inshore forecast is for a Gale 8 on the South Coast..

WE ARE FED UP WITH THE MET OFFICWE GETTING IT WRONG!!

All of the crews thatwent the Cherbourg know that the forecast was pants then, it is pants now..

Please - we have to do something!!

I am going to start writing to the CEO of the met office - forecast V actuals - anyone want to sign up?


Ian

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Re: I can\'t remember

the last time a forecast was right. OK sometimes whats going to happen is so obvious or widespread that you couldn't get it wrong if you were interred. Then the Met Office will get it right. I don't know what they cost us or if their service to say aviation is as poor but they don't inspire me.

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Hi Ian,

This situation was always going to be very difficult to predict as is always the case with low pressure systems travelling eastwards up the channel, a few miles deviation from its predicted track can make a huge difference and that is what happened in this case.

I am not sticking up for the Met office as they have let me down in the past but I think given all the models where offering a serious storm for the very southern parts of the UK and it did not happen just shows that mother nature will always have a few tricks up her sleeve.

Cheers

Stephen

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Oh!. So thats all right then?.

Sent this am.
Dear BBC Weather.
Inshore waters forecast from 0530 12/1/04 .........
'From North Foreland to St. Catherine's Point. Wind: south 6 or 7 soon veering west gale 8 or severe gale 9, decreasing southwest 5 or 6 later rain at times. Visibility: moderate or good'

Your 5 Day Forecast commencing Monday 12/1/04 at Newhaven .............. Wind - Easterly - 13 mph.

Can you please explain this discrepancy, which I must say, is not unusual?

Reply.
It all changed about 5 o'clock this morning. All the supercomputers and PhDs that the Met Office, NOAA, Meteo France etc have can't always cope with chaos - so yes, they got it wrong. It just changed and moved, and all the extrapolations went wrong.

Bernard Newnham
Duty Weather Producer.







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Re: Oh!. So thats all right then?.

<It all changed about 5 o'clock this morning. All the supercomputers and PhDs that the Met Office, NOAA, Meteo France etc have can't always cope with chaos - so yes, they got it wrong. It just changed and moved, and all the extrapolations went wrong. >

What a load of B***cks I am looking at an NOAA Atlantic Surface Analysis at 0600 GMT on 11 Jan 04 which shows a developing storm at 45deg N 35deg W tracking towards Bristol., and a 48 hr forecast from the same source valid for 0000 hrs 12 jan which shows storm followed by gales with 40 knots of wind from a series of depressions tracking up from 35N 50W.

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who's been tinkering with the buoys? the Greenwich one got hit by 55kn of wind at 1400 on 12th whilst the Sandettie further up the channel saw the weakest wind strength of the 12th 5kn at 1400 ... all the wind got shovelled up and squeezed into one small corridor? (there's a michael jackson joke here ... )

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39.1 kn at CHIMET at the moment, is this what you were waiting for?

<hr width=100% size=1>...If you can find the simple solution to a complex problem, you've got it wrong!.........
 
At the Essex Boat Show yesterday, exhibitors in the East Hall (a temporary structure) where warned that they would have to evacuate if the Meat Orifice-predicted storm arrived, as the structure only had Health and Safety certification for winds up to 54 mph. As it was the rain fell stright downwards most of the day; no evacuations, no damage but a load of worry for people who had tens of thousands of pounds of stock, etc, on their stands. I find it difficult to believe the MO could have been so wrong, only 12 hours in advance.

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Generally, you are right about winds and isobars, but not always. As I understand it (and I am no expert) many of the most dangerous storms that happen in the UK are secondary depressions that can develop quite quickly. If I recall correctly, this was what happened in the case of the Fastnet storm. The Met office etc looks for evidence that this might happen, such as thickness (which is also shown on some synoptics).

I do not know if this is what they thought was going to happen this time, my boat is out of the water and so I was not paying much attention. From the conditions in Kent last night when it was blowing a hoolie it may be they just got their timing wrong.

Having said that, I have to say that I have now got to the point of totally disregarding the Met Office as a source of weather predication they are so poor. My feeling is that they rely too much on their supercomputers and no enough on knowledge or experience. I would guess that most of the Phd’s they have got their doctorates on very precise issues that have nothing to do with UK weather, or they got them for designing computer programs.

They have a trick they play of giving a forecast on the day (which really amounts to no more than looking out of the window and assuming that things are going to be much the same in an hour or two’s time), and then using that to come up with the ludicrous percentage success rate.


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It was the discrepancy between charts and the apparent different conclusions drawn by different arms of the Met Off that prompted my earlier post. I have come to trust their web site's 3 day pressure chart forecast. Therefore, it was no a surprise that the plague of frogs, beetles, toads and lizards did not come to pass.

I agree. It would seem they need to get there act together.

Magic

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Re: Oh!. So thats all right then?.

Rabbie, regarding the Met Office reply to you, this is of course just a smoke screen, since to say that it was just one of those tricky ones suddenly at 5.00 am is nonsence. The fact remains that last Sunday night if you looked at the Met Office's own website, you would find that they were predicting winds up to 90mph cyclonic, or they were predicting 10 mph SW - it all depended upon which part of their web site you happened to look at.

Mick


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Re: Oh!. So thats all right then?.

Precisely!

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I agree sudden depressions can catch everybody out. I got caught going down the channel c8 years ago when snow fell on Dartmoor in June during the 10 Tors race - 45kts arrived within 20 mins of the 6pm shipping forecast when the 2pm had predicted no more than 20kt. Bust the boom/mainsheet fitting after a jibe and had to run back to St Malo after aborting entering Lezardieux. Suspect yesterday was one of those- but I agree they should make more effort to update all forecasts to all classes of forecasts

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It is true it can catch the average yachtsman (you and me?) out, but really, from a day or two out, it should not catch out the met Office. The probability of a secondary depression can be predicted from the available information by then.

I think part of the problem with the Met may be the way they give us an absolute forecast. It will do this or it will do that. In fact nobody can ever be certain and really they should be saying things like ‘there is a 70% chance this, 10% chance that etc.’

I suspect the reason they do not do it is because of the limited slots they have on broadcast media. In effect all they ever give us is the headlines, probably good enough if you are worrying about the need for a rain coat when you go down the shops, but not when you are half way across the North Sea.


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