" It was Well Forecast "

[Neilsouth]

I'll make it easier to understand

All day they've said " it was well forecast " and or " We forecasted it days ago ", for which today was 90% correct. Yet a lot of the forum members here don't like people blowing their own trumpet

However!

When they get it wrong, nothing is said! It's pushed under the carpet as if the forecast was never made. If a forecast ever goes wrong, they should say as such and also tell us why it went wrong, so we all can learn from it.

k?

[Relativistic]

Catastrophic failure of a forecast here. The Met Office were persistent with their forecasts of heavy snow through the night. They were also persistent with pushing it back, through the night.

The end result?

2 centimetres. You call that heavy snow?

Of course they won't mention this wrong forecast.

[knocker]

Catastrophic failure of a forecast here. The Met Office were persistent with their forecasts of heavy snow through the night. They were also persistent with pushing it back, through the night.

The end result?

2 centimetres. You call that heavy snow?

Of course they won't mention this wrong forecast.

Catastrophic?

[Relativistic]

Catastrophic?

Exaggerative?

[Crepuscular Ray]

At least they don't claim they were right all the time when they were completely wrong, like some others do. They were spot on for the danger area in South Wales.

[Methuselah]

Catastrophic failure of a forecast here. The Met Office were persistent with their forecasts of heavy snow through the night. They were also persistent with pushing it back, through the night.

The end result?

2 centimetres. You call that heavy snow?

Of course they won't mention this wrong forecast.

Ah, 'catastrophic'...Wasn't that the word Piers Corbyn used to describe the current cold spell?

Edited January 19, 2013 by Rybris Ponce

[ScottSnow]

I know for a fact that some of our members don't like other members blowing their own trumpet regarding, well forecasted weather. However every forecast I've seen so far on the beeb since 9am has said " it was well forecast " and " We accuractly forecasted it ". Yet if they EVER get a bad forecast, it's pushed under the carpet as if they did no wrong.

I for one always turn to net weather for my forecasts, atleast you get different view points on the weather!

The forecasts for up here in the north east have been poor. Take today for example, the BBC said that it would be dry but we have had constant snow showers all day.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Numerical weather prediction models have certainly improved many aspects of weather forecast accuracy over the last few decades and have made it possible to forecast reasonably accurately for 4-6 days out in many cases, whereas in the 1970s forecasting accurately more than one day out was very difficult.

However I think the decline of the human element has had downsides, particularly re. forecasting at a more local level. Many weather enthusiasts who have lived in specific areas of the UK for long periods develop an understanding of aspects of their local climates that are poorly picked out on forecast models, such as convection over the North Sea in easterly setups. The increased reliance on models, plus the eagerness of the MetO and BBC and other organisations to cut the number of regional/local centres to save money, has put us at increasing risk of losing that. I feel that this may be a factor behind why, say, convection over the North Sea between Newcastle and Aberdeen, tends not to be forecast as well as convection along the English Channel, as most operational forecasters these days are increasingly based in Exeter, London and/or Reading.

I think the forecasters at the MetO have had an extremely tough time over the last week due to the tremendous uncertainty in the model outputs recently, and the way that, for example, the widespread light snowfalls on Thursday night were not picked out by the models until 6-12 hours beforehand, so I wouldn't expect their forecasts to have been amazingly accurate. In situations like this, creating an accurate forecast can rely upon a lot of educated guesswork and some elements of luck as it is near-impossible to pick out all of the correct signals from the mess that we've been getting.

I do, though, feel doubtful about the BBC patting themselves on the back about getting the forecast right when it is clear that it was only right over some areas of the country.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Thundery wintry showers

[Relativistic]

Ah, 'catastrophic'...Wasn't that the word Piers Corbyn used to describe the current cold spell?

Wouldn't surprise me.

[Crepuscular Ray]

Numerical weather prediction models have certainly improved many aspects of weather forecast accuracy over the last few decades and have made it possible to forecast reasonably accurately for 4-6 days out in many cases, whereas in the 1970s forecasting accurately more than one day out was very difficult.

However I think the decline of the human element has had downsides, particularly re. forecasting at a more local level. Many weather enthusiasts who have lived in specific areas of the UK for long periods develop an understanding of aspects of their local climates that are poorly picked out on forecast models, such as convection over the North Sea in easterly setups. The increased reliance on models, plus the eagerness of the MetO and BBC and other organisations to cut the number of regional/local centres to save money, has put us at increasing risk of losing that. I feel that this may be a factor behind why, say, convection over the North Sea between Newcastle and Aberdeen, tends not to be forecast as well as convection along the English Channel, as most operational forecasters these days are increasingly based in Exeter, London and/or Reading.

I think the forecasters at the MetO have had an extremely tough time over the last week due to the tremendous uncertainty in the model outputs recently, and the way that, for example, the widespread light snowfalls on Thursday night were not picked out by the models until 6-12 hours beforehand, so I wouldn't expect their forecasts to have been amazingly accurate. In situations like this, creating an accurate forecast can rely upon a lot of educated guesswork and some elements of luck as it is near-impossible to pick out all of the correct signals from the mess that we've been getting.

I do, though, feel doubtful about the BBC patting themselves on the back about getting the forecast right when it is clear that it was only right over some areas of the country.

How right/wrong were they in comparison to other forecasters issuing forecasts at a similar level of detail? It would be an interesting thing to look into.

[The PIT]

Well for here everybody was laughing. Warnings for this why it's nothing. I had the netweather extra radar up all morning so I may have talked a few more in signing up but overall people didn't want to pay.

Edited January 19, 2013 by The PIT

[knocker]

Numerical weather prediction models have certainly improved many aspects of weather forecast accuracy over the last few decades and have made it possible to forecast reasonably accurately for 4-6 days out in many cases, whereas in the 1970s forecasting accurately more than one day out was very difficult.

However I think the decline of the human element has had downsides, particularly re. forecasting at a more local level. Many weather enthusiasts who have lived in specific areas of the UK for long periods develop an understanding of aspects of their local climates that are poorly picked out on forecast models, such as convection over the North Sea in easterly setups. The increased reliance on models, plus the eagerness of the MetO and BBC and other organisations to cut the number of regional/local centres to save money, has put us at increasing risk of losing that. I feel that this may be a factor behind why, say, convection over the North Sea between Newcastle and Aberdeen, tends not to be forecast as well as convection along the English Channel, as most operational forecasters these days are increasingly based in Exeter, London and/or Reading.

I think the forecasters at the MetO have had an extremely tough time over the last week due to the tremendous uncertainty in the model outputs recently, and the way that, for example, the widespread light snowfalls on Thursday night were not picked out by the models until 6-12 hours beforehand, so I wouldn't expect their forecasts to have been amazingly accurate. In situations like this, creating an accurate forecast can rely upon a lot of educated guesswork and some elements of luck as it is near-impossible to pick out all of the correct signals from the mess that we've been getting.

I do, though, feel doubtful about the BBC patting themselves on the back about getting the forecast right when it is clear that it was only right over some areas of the country.

I agree with most of this but I don't know who are the other organisations are and I think the economics should be at least explained in more detail.

Many years ago the METO set up a network of regional weather centers. London. Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Cardiff. Norwich, Nottingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Aberdeen.to tackle this particular problem. It was a good idea in the sense that it covered the points raised by TWS but it was hugely expensive and had to come out of the budget from the MOD.

With the advent of advanced technology and access to the same information private companies could produce met. products at a fraction of the cost of the METO although of course the latter still had their public obligations. Noble Denton was a prime example. This led to the METO setting up a separate commercial branch and an economic queeze. No longer could the office continue along the same lines. Thus most of these offices were closed. I was around when this was being negotiated. Are these private companies like Netweather going to open regional offices to offer a better service. Of course not.

The same applied to the radiosonde network. At one one time there were eight manned stations doing four ascents a day costing a fortune and others could use the info. for nowt, Now there are three doing two with Nottingham popping up occasionally.. And of course the rainfall radars were installed by the METO.

Of course Numerical weather prediction has improved forecasting but the lack of human input is purely commercial.

Edited January 20, 2013 by knocker

[knocker]

The forecasts for up here in the north east have been poor. Take today for example, the BBC said that it would be dry but we have had constant snow showers all day.

Exactly no rain so it was dry.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I agree with most of this but I don't know who are the other organisations are and I think the economics should be at least explained in more detail.

Many years ago the METO set up a network of regional weather centers. London. Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Cardiff. Norwich, Nottingham, Cardiff. Manchester, Glasgow and Aberdeen.to tackle this particular problem. It was a good idea in the sense that it covered the points raised by TWS but it was hugely expensive and had to come out of the budget from the MOD.

With the advent of advanced technology and access to the same information private companies could produce met. products at a fraction of the cost of the METO although of course the latter still had their public obligations. Noble Denton was a prime example. This led to the METO setting up a separate commercial branch and an economic queeze. No longer could the office continue along the same lines. Thus most of these offices were closed. I was around when this was being negotiated. Are these private companies like Netweather going to open regional offices to offer a better service. Of course not.

The same applied to the radiosonde network. At one one time there were eight manned stations doing four ascents a day costing a fortune and others could use the info. for nowt, Now there are three doing two with Nottingham popping up occasionally.. And of course the rainfall radars were installed by the METO.

Of course Numerical weather prediction has improved forecasting but the lack of human input is purely commercial.

Some good points there and I can see that the costs of maintaining the regional weather centres would outweigh the potential benefits as far as the Met Office were concerned.

I mentioned the BBC because they have 'quietly' proposed trimming the number of regional weather presenters for the local weather forecasts, and trimming the number of centres that they forecast from (e.g. the North East and Cumbria presenters may be required to relocate to Leeds and forecast from there):

http://www.guardian....al-cost-cutting

It may end up being scrapped due to the opposition that it has generated though.

Re. the closure of the weather centres, given the rise of the internet and teleworking I'd have thought a possible compromise would be to have a small network of forecasters representing individual regions of the UK and doing their forecasting work from home/communicating to the Met Office- this would be far less costly than having to maintain full-on regional weather centres for them and would still give most of the same benefits. However those things had not really taken off at the time that most of the weather centres closed, to be fair.

I have to admit that regarding the "other companies" I don't have any specific examples in mind, and I'm not sure that there are any other prominent examples (bar Met Office and BBC). However "rationalization", where businesses opt to centre entirely in one location (most often somewhere in the South East) rather than operating in a number of scattered locations across the UK, has long been a trend in many areas of industry in order to save costs.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Thundery wintry showers