In message , Dave Ludlow
writes
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:26:23 +0100, "Philip Eden"
philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:

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...

Hmmm... are you _sure_ his name escapes you?

I listened to that midnight R4 forecast (it was possibly at the end of
the midnight news bulletin, about 0025?) and the cat was well and
truly out of the bag by then.

That midnight forecaster (well known to us in here) was only too well
aware of what was to follow, he reported a 100 mph gust that had just
occurred in the Channel Islands and I am pretty sure that he gave an
accurate forecast of the timescale of the coming carnage - including
the time it would hit London. A lot changed between the 9pm and
midnight forecasts!

Although i was safe and sound in South Cheshire at the time, it
prompted me to stay up for the entire nightand the following morning,
listening to radio and watching TV. It was quite a night, even from
afar!

Well it certainly escapes me because it was, to my knowledge , never
released. The directorate hid for 3 days while a junior friend of mine
(Robert Lines I think) was left to handle the hysterical media.
Such is life.
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

In message .com,
Richard Dixon writes
On 16 Oct, 19:17, Paul Bartlett wrote:
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.

The "fine mess" - love it, Paul. Interesting to see that strike
command got it right. Which model run was this?

I really must dig out Glenn Shutts' paper to find his conclusions
about a 15km re-run he did in 1990.

Cheers
Richard

1200 coarse.
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

Paul Bartlett wrote:

In message . 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

Most north Atlantic lows are bigger and more powerful than
hurricanes. Wind speeds in hurricanes are often high though. There
was a lot of very warm tropical air involved in this system though,
with consequential heavy rain in the evening loosening the ground -
and then the 0001 winds, so down came the trees which were still in
leaf. Cheers Paul

Maybe my memory is playing tricks but my recollection is that the trees
were very much more leafy that night in 1987 than they were on the same
date this year. The "fall" is very much under way this year whereas in
1987 my recollection is that the trees were still fully green.

--
Norman Lynagh
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
85m a.s.l.
(remove "thisbit" twice to e-mail)

Alan White wrote in
:

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:31:54 +0100, "paulus" wrote:

If he had named her and shamed her that would be different.

She and her son were interviewed on News 24 at about 17:20.

And at (I think) the forecast just before 18.00, Fish seemed to deny that
she was the person he'd mentioned! I was only half-listening, so can't be
sure about that.

--
Bewdley, Worcs. ~90m asl.

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:20:44 -0700, Tudor Hughes
wrote:

On Oct 17, 12:16 am, Dave Ludlow wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:20:00 GMT, "MichaelJP" wrote:

Admitting that the _forecast_ was wrong is
not enough. Michael and the Met Office should accept that his
statement to the general public that there would be no hurricane was
inadvertently misleading and effectively wrong.

Here in Surrey there were a couple of hours of Force 9,
occasionally Force 10. If the Man on the Clapham Omnibus thinks
that's a hurricane he needs an educational trip to the Caribbean, say,
at the appropriate time.

Aaaah yes but you are over 30 miles inland! There are two main ways of
describing the strength of hurricanes in the US: their highest
sustained windspeed over open sea and their highest sustained
windspeed as they come ashore. That is the fair comparison to make and
I think the 1987 great strom easily meets both criteria in terms of
sustained (converted to one minute mean) wind speeds.

--
Dave

Paul Bartlett wrote:

In message , MichaelJP
writes

"Paul Bartlett" wrote in message
...
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

Interesting about the Russian "trawlers", weren't they spy ships and not
actually trawlers at all in those days?


They all commissar on them, they were both loyal to the USSR by force.
So why did they let their invaluable information on the WMO net?


As I recall, they used to report false positions. British trawlers did the
same during the Cod War.

--
Graham P Davis
Bracknell, Berks., UK
Send e-mails to "newsman" as mails to "newsboy" are ignored.

In message , Norman
writes
Paul Bartlett wrote:

In message . 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

Most north Atlantic lows are bigger and more powerful than
hurricanes. Wind speeds in hurricanes are often high though. There
was a lot of very warm tropical air involved in this system though,
with consequential heavy rain in the evening loosening the ground -
and then the 0001 winds, so down came the trees which were still in
leaf. Cheers Paul

Maybe my memory is playing tricks but my recollection is that the trees
were very much more leafy that night in 1987 than they were on the same
date this year. The "fall" is very much under way this year whereas in
1987 my recollection is that the trees were still fully green.

Agreed
Regards
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

On Oct 16, 8:52 am, "Alan Murphy" wrote:
"paulus" wrote in message

...I only saw the end of Mr. Fish's guest forecast presenter spot on the 6
o'clock news last evening. He seemed very comfortable.

It was as though he had never been away. So nice to hear about
temperatures and not "the numbers".

Bring back the oldies I say!

Paulus

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 theBBCdid not like the
idea of him publicly impugning their integrity :-)

Alan

Er, how did it impugn the BBC's integrity? In the original broadcast
he clearly referred back to a Florida story, and made the remark about
no hurricane on its way...to Florida. Don't see how/why anyone's
integrity could be impugned by that!

On Oct 16, 9:36 am, crazyhorse wrote:
On 16 Oct, 10:01, 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 theBBCdid 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 windyweather. 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 LondonWeatherCentre was a battle of egos given some of their
responses in recent days regarding the incident.

Richard

I think you are right. 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.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

But the member of the public didn't exist - she was made up by him!

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:55:20 -0800, wrote:

But the member of the public didn't exist - she was made up by him!

She and her son were interviewed.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.gt-britain.co.uk/weather