Weather forecast up the duff again

[tony_brighton]

Forecast for Sunday : F3-4 occasionally F5.
Actual for Sunday : F6, Gusting F7 (peak gust 34kts - bottom of F8).
They got the bit right about the wind direction and the showers.....

 

[Guest]

Yes, the original forecast I read was for F2/3.

What made me chuckle was when yesterday afternoon (1445, if I remember correctly) the Met Office got round to issuing a strong wind warning that winds may reach F6 for a time. It had been doing a steady F6 and worse for a good 24 hrs before that.

I am thinking of offering a service to the Met Office of ringing them up and telling them what the weather is doing so that their forecasts can be in "real time" rather than 24hrs behind the rest of us.

 

[tony_brighton]

Thinking how much they charge for marinecall services - you could charge them a lot of money!

 

[tonyleigh]

It does seem to have been a bad year for the Met Office's accuracy but it's not only them. Other on-line services have been equally poor. I have found it particularly disconcerting how period forecasts (3/5 day / trends etc) often appear to be revised quite markedly each day so forward planning becomes a nightmare. In defence I can only concede that when I have turned to raw data I have frequently been unsure of what conclusions to draw. While this must take into account my limitations and lack of skills, I do feel that accurate forecasting has been quantifiably more difficult this summer. Interested to hear a professional meteorologist's comments?

 

[philip_stevens]

The Met Office had a free advert on BBC1 today, when they were on about how good the biggest computer set-up in the world is. Where?? The Cray computers at the UK Met Office!!

You can get a better idea from logging on to www.wetterzentrale.de of forecasts for up to 9 days ahead. And they are not bad on accuracy. They also show a UK Met Office chart.

regards,
Philip

 

[tonyleigh]

Indeed I use wetterc. for much raw data - in preference to the Met Off. largely because of course they don't charge. The issue I was trying to raise was a competent professional's comment on the difficulty of predicting weather patterns this summer and does this excuse/explain some of the poor quality. Associated with this is perhaps the issue of how much information (and diagnosis) is kept from us especially bearing in mind the two effects of MOD control and income generation. I can accept inaccuracies given that weather prediction is an art form as well as a science. I find it more difficult to accept them if a generously funded public body is failing to interpret data and disseminate quality information in what ought to be seen as a vital public safety service.

 

[Guest]

Probably too much reliance on electronic boxes of magic giving out a very broad based forecast and not enough of the eyes and ears and local area specialities for the individuals.

Mind you where we are on a 30 mile by 15 mile island we have microcosms of weather and it is amasing how different the wather can be just 5 or 10 miles down the road.
luckily I live 100 yards from the harboour and the decision to sail or not can be made pretty much at a glance (and having a suitable seaboat helps ride out the more entertaining moments).

 

[seahorse]

Yeah man tell me about it!
I've just spent the last 3 weeks sailing from Wick to Mallaig via the Hebrides. No matter what the forcast the wind was either zero or 25kts! On the nose of course.