"Richard Dixon" wrote in message
ups.com...
On 16 Oct, 09:52, "Alan Murphy" wrote:

Interesting thing was that on the lunchtime news
he explained, at some length, that he was referring
to Florida when he made the the 'no hurricane'
remark. On the evening news this explanation was
not forthcoming. Perhaps the BBC did not like the
idea of him publicly impugning their integrity :-)

Fish was also cut off mid-sentence - after the "don't worry, there
isn't" - he also says that we are expecting some very windy weather. I
think it was an error on Fish's part to expect the nation to
distinguish between a hurricane and an extratropical storm. Giles in
my mind was more palpable 6 hours before it happened, if we're looking
into shooting the messenger! I get the impression that Giles v Fish at
the London Weather Centre was a battle of egos given some of their
responses in recent days regarding the incident.

LOL ... I think Bill has always been palpable ... I think you meant
'culpable', or perhaps 'palpably culpable! ...

Having gone through the two reports (MO and Swinnerton-Dyer ...
internal and independent respectively) with a fine-toothed comb
when they came out in 1988, and reminded myself with a rapid
re-reading just now, it's amusing to see how the various
protagonists have gently spun there own stories. And after the
hundreds of retellings they have undoubtedly come to believe their
own spin. Nor should anyone feel sorry for them ... they've lived
off that event for twenty years.

The one I feel sorry for is the chap who was chief forecaster
at Bracknell on the 15th and who was responsible
(with others) for the guidance supplied to Giles, Fish, and
co, including the chap who did the midnight forecast on R4
whose name for the moment escapes me. That chief
forecaster's name never came out, thanks to an excellent closing
of ranks, for his name was attached to the guidance which went
out to dozens of individual users, and I'm not about to reveal it now.
I rather suspect that, if the events were replayed today, his name
would have escaped into the wild before you could say 'cheese'.
However, he soon disappeared from the bench ... whether by
his own volition or pushed by others I have no idea.

Philip

"MichaelJP" wrote :
"crazyhorse" wrote:
On 16 Oct, 10:01, Richard Dixon wrote:

It was his perceived arrogance at the dismissal
of the 'woman from Wales' who was probably genuinely worried about
what she thought might be heading our way, that caused the main media
backlash. His idea that there should always be some kind of 'tease' at
the start of a broadcast, in order to lead into the main headline is
fine, but it should not be at the expense of a member of the public.

I saw this item.

Does Michael Fish's explanation work then? Was there an item on the news
about a Florida hurricane, and did a woman from Wales phone in, presumably
misinterpreting the item as being about the UK?

It doesn't really stand close scrutiny.

The transcript of Mike's broadcast does not mention Florida. However,
there had been a Tropical Storm, Floyd (a marginal hurricane at one point),
which brushed past the Florida Keys on October 12. If he was referring
to this he was 60 hours too late. More likely someone had heard that
TS Floyd had made someone's holiday in the Keys slightly uncomfortable
and that the local media had pointed out that the storm was heading off
into the Atlantic (which it was). He may have been referring to this (only
he actually knows) but that would not be so easy for him to excuse.
My opinion, for what its worth, is that it was just a desperately unhappy
coincidence.

Floyd was subsequently fingered as a possible contributor to the energy
of the group of three shallow-wave depressions, then in mid-Atlantic, one
of which eventually became the Great Storm. But that doesn't add up
either, and Floyd is not mentioned in the scientific part of the Met Office
internal enquiry. At 00z on the 14th Floyd was about 1000km southwest
of the actual area of interest.

Was it a hurricane? Most meteorologists say no, for obvious reasons.
But they should read the entry for the word in the OED, and then they
would understand why Sir John Houghton (as he was then) was laughed
at in the press conference when he said it wasn't.

Philip

On Oct 16, 10:01 am, Richard Dixon wrote:
On 16 Oct, 09:52, "Alan Murphy" wrote:

Interesting thing was that on the lunchtime news
he explained, at some length, that he was referring
to Florida when he made the the 'no hurricane'
remark. On the evening news this explanation was
not forthcoming. Perhaps the BBC did not like the
idea of him publicly impugning their integrity :-)

Fish was also cut off mid-sentence - after the "don't worry, there
isn't" - he also says that we are expecting some very windy weather. I
think it was an error on Fish's part to expect the nation to
distinguish between a hurricane and an extratropical storm. Giles in
my mind was more palpable 6 hours before it happened, if we're looking
into shooting the messenger! I get the impression that Giles v Fish at
the London Weather Centre was a battle of egos given some of their
responses in recent days regarding the incident.

Richard

From what I've read about Giles and know about Fish that would
be some battle. But Fishy was a good forecaster/presenter, far better
than most today who admittedly have to operate in a very dumbed-down
culture.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

Floyd was subsequently fingered as a possible contributor to the energy
of the group of three shallow-wave depressions, then in mid-Atlantic, one
of which eventually became the Great Storm. But that doesn't add up
either, and Floyd is not mentioned in the scientific part of the Met Office
internal enquiry. At 00z on the 14th Floyd was about 1000km southwest
of the actual area of interest.

Philip
Hoskins and Berrisford in the special issue of Weather attribute part
of the tropopause anomaly associated with the storm to outflow from
Floyd.
Air from the top of Floyd would have had ~0 PV, at ~100 hPA and be
carried across the Atlantic on the 100 Kt 200 hPa jet. This would have
merged with a poleward anomaly to create a marked tropopause 'jump'
regards
David

On 16 Oct, 13:26, "Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:
"Richard Dixon" wrote in message

LOL ... I think Bill has always been palpable ... I think you meant
'culpable', or perhaps 'palpably culpable! ...

LOL - and to think I pride myself on being half decent at English.
There goes any chance of my Daily Star column !!

And after the
hundreds of retellings they have undoubtedly come to believe their
own spin. Nor should anyone feel sorry for them ... they've lived
off that event for twenty years.

As well as the "I blame the French" pandering the Daily Mail
generation of Fish, I thought the re-runs by Shutts pointed to two
aircraft reports that we just outside the data assimilation time that
would have helped the analysis greatly: I could be wrong though.

That chief
forecaster's name never came out, thanks to an excellent closing
of ranks, for his name was attached to the guidance which went
out to dozens of individual users, and I'm not about to reveal it now.
I rather suspect that, if the events were replayed today, his name
would have escaped into the wild before you could say 'cheese'.
However, he soon disappeared from the bench ... whether by
his own volition or pushed by others I have no idea.

It is amazing now how we've come to use satellite imagery in the 20
years since then and the whole "emerging cloud head" is instantly
recognisable *now* as a forerunner of rapid cyclogenesis. The 87 storm
is a particularly striking example of cloud head. It's just a reminder
of how meteorology is still very much in its infancy as a science.

Richard

On 16 Oct, 11:20, "MichaelJP" wrote:

Does Michael Fish's explanation work then? Was there an item on the news
about a Florida hurricane, and did a woman from Wales phone in, presumably
misinterpreting the item as being about the UK?

Perhaps a full public enquiry should be launched!- Hide quoted text -

There was never a "woman from Wales" - it was Fish's paraphrasing of a
colleague's mother or something. I feel sorry for Fish's treatment by
the media and their rather selective snipping (sniping?!) of his
"don't worry, there isn't", but some things really stand out to me
from what's been said of late.

1) It's pretty clear that the scale of what was about to happen wasn't
known. If there was a really severe event about to happen as did
happen, then Fish would have started quite sternly and wouldn't have
started with a flippant throw-away comment. He seems to think he was
actually right as he said afterwards (secondary to his "hurricane"
comment) that we were in for some windy weather. I get the impression
that Fish suffers from the common human failing of "inability to admit
when you're wrong" - something that Ian McCaskill did when he held his
hands up when interviewed on the One O'Clock News the following day
(looking rather tired and sweaty IIRC!) and admitted as such.

2) The lack of teamwork from Fish/Giles. Fish did the lunchtime
forecast and had an air of "well I was right, it was Giles you should
be lambasting". The impression distinctly comes across as if Fish did
his forecast at lunchtime and then Giles did his in the evening - it's
almost as if they were separate forecasting entities and not both
representing the same source of information (from Bracknell). It all
smacks of two men with very large egos (unlike the aforemention Mr
McCaskill !).

Richard

Lying abed around midnight on that fateful night listening to London VolmetI
remember rousing my slumbering wife with the news that the temperature in
Luton was 7C and in Gatwick 16C ,so 'summat was up'.
She wasn't very impressed with that fact so I reckoned that I had over
reacted,the rest is history as they say......

RonB
"Tudor Hughes" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Oct 16, 10:01 am, Richard Dixon wrote:
On 16 Oct, 09:52, "Alan Murphy" wrote:

Interesting thing was that on the lunchtime news
he explained, at some length, that he was referring
to Florida when he made the the 'no hurricane'
remark. On the evening news this explanation was
not forthcoming. Perhaps the BBC did not like the
idea of him publicly impugning their integrity :-)

Fish was also cut off mid-sentence - after the "don't worry, there
isn't" - he also says that we are expecting some very windy weather. I
think it was an error on Fish's part to expect the nation to
distinguish between a hurricane and an extratropical storm. Giles in
my mind was more palpable 6 hours before it happened, if we're looking
into shooting the messenger! I get the impression that Giles v Fish at
the London Weather Centre was a battle of egos given some of their
responses in recent days regarding the incident.

Richard

From what I've read about Giles and know about Fish that would
be some battle. But Fishy was a good forecaster/presenter, far better
than most today who admittedly have to operate in a very dumbed-down
culture.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

In message . com,
Richard Dixon writes
On 16 Oct, 11:20, "MichaelJP" wrote:

Does Michael Fish's explanation work then? Was there an item on the news
about a Florida hurricane, and did a woman from Wales phone in, presumably
misinterpreting the item as being about the UK?

Perhaps a full public enquiry should be launched!- Hide quoted text -

There was never a "woman from Wales" - it was Fish's paraphrasing of a
colleague's mother or something. I feel sorry for Fish's treatment by
the media and their rather selective snipping (sniping?!) of his
"don't worry, there isn't", but some things really stand out to me
from what's been said of late.

1) It's pretty clear that the scale of what was about to happen wasn't
known. If there was a really severe event about to happen as did
happen, then Fish would have started quite sternly and wouldn't have
started with a flippant throw-away comment. He seems to think he was
actually right as he said afterwards (secondary to his "hurricane"
comment) that we were in for some windy weather. I get the impression
that Fish suffers from the common human failing of "inability to admit
when you're wrong" - something that Ian McCaskill did when he held his
hands up when interviewed on the One O'Clock News the following day
(looking rather tired and sweaty IIRC!) and admitted as such.

2) The lack of teamwork from Fish/Giles. Fish did the lunchtime
forecast and had an air of "well I was right, it was Giles you should
be lambasting". The impression distinctly comes across as if Fish did
his forecast at lunchtime and then Giles did his in the evening - it's
almost as if they were separate forecasting entities and not both
representing the same source of information (from Bracknell). It all
smacks of two men with very large egos (unlike the aforemention Mr
McCaskill !).

Richard

I was on duty that night at RAF Cottesmore as S.Met.O. The HQSTC prog
VT 0001 showed a 140KT gradient behind the low as it swung north. The
prog was issued by my mate Jim Lawson, even knocking a bit off for
cyclonic curvature it was damn good. The defence side therefore
suffered no damage.
The fine mess however ran the low up the channel, I was lead to believe
that was because the intervention forecaster at Bracknell had a choice
of two Russian trawlers in Biscay, but they had a 10MB pressure
difference - he chose the wrong one. The reports from Russian trawlers
were always suspect - yet useful. (As I realised when forecasting for
the Falklands war).
Fish et alia were irrelevant - apart from the media.
Cheers
Paul
--
'Wisest are they that know they do not know.' Socrates.
Paul Bartlett FRMetS
www.rutnet.co.uk Go to local weather.
400FT AMSL 25Miles southwest of the Wash

The ITV program on the Storm, has already come out with

"This storm was more powerful and larger than a hurricane"

A minimal cat one maybe, but try telling that to the people who went
through Katrina

In article . com,
BlueLightning writes:
The ITV program on the Storm, has already come out with

"This storm was more powerful and larger than a hurricane"

A minimal cat one maybe, but try telling that to the people who went
through Katrina


It depends what you mean by "more powerful and larger", though if they
didn't explain what they meant then I agree that it was misleading. It
may have affected a larger area than a typical hurricane, and for that
reason may have "generated" more power in total, even though the winds
were less than in most hurricanes.
--
John Hall
"Honest criticism is hard to take,
particularly from a relative, a friend,
an acquaintance, or a stranger." Franklin P Jones