"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote in message
...

"Adrian D. Shaw" wrote in message
...

Radio 4 17:57 forecast said there was a record breaking frost last night
somewhere in Oxfordshire.

I shouldn't really be surprised because it happens so often, but the
handling of climatological information by the BBC Weather Centre
continues to be excruciatingly embarrassing.



I know what you mean. Thank God for this website. It means that we can
exchange and swap information and discuss things in a decent manner between
amateurs and professionals.
Since the BBC has dummed down to the point of being useless, it is only
on the Internet now in which we can find decent information and talk about
it. I haven't quite read all the replies to my thread, but from what I have
read so far I have found more decent information on it than would have been
the case elsewhere.
Thanks very much to all of you:-)

Gavin.

"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote in message
...

"Adrian D. Shaw" wrote in message
...

Radio 4 17:57 forecast said there was a record breaking frost last night
somewhere in Oxfordshire.

I shouldn't really be surprised because it happens so often, but the
handling of climatological information by the BBC Weather Centre
continues to be excruciatingly embarrassing. Here are a few facts to
help us judge what to make of the above statement which has appeared
regularly throughout the day in pretty much the same form (I've even
had to field press enquiries about it):

1. The quote actually refers to RAF Benson. Benson was not a
seven-days a week station until 1974.

2. The enclosure at Benson moved in the mid-1990s ... it is now more
open and 4m lower, and a quick eyeballing of the records shows that
it is now more susceptible to low readings on radiation nights. A
comparison
with adjacent stations confirms this. Comparisons with the records before
then are therefore entirely illegitimate.

3. It was not remotely an Oxfordshire record. This was lazy shorthand
by the perpetrator who knew that nobody had heard of Benson but
a few listeners in their new, dumbed-down world might conceivably
have heard of Oxfordshire. Lower readings were observed at
Wallingford (a couple of inches away on the OS map) during the
Junes of 1996 and 1991 for instance (haven't checked back any further).

4. The CET minimum for last night has a return period (for June) of
just three years. Certainly a few scattered individual locations will
have had their coldest June night for a lot longer (since 1991 here in
Luton, for instance) but that's in the nature of these sort of records.

5. Minima below zero occur somewhere or other in the UK in June
every other year, on average. Last night did not even produce the UK's
lowest temperature so far this month; that was -1.4°C at Altnaharra
the previous night, but we know that Scotland doesn't count, don't we?

6. In summary, then, it was averagely cold night.

7. Much more unusual is the sea-level pressure which got close to 1039
mbar this morning ... probably (haven't done an exhaustive check) the
highest
since 7th June 1962. The June record for the British Isles, as we
discussed a
couple of days ago, is 1043.1 mbar in 1959 (original source: S.D.Burt).

Philip Eden




Well done Philip :-)

Gavin.

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 19:46:53 +0100, "Gavin Staples"
wrote:

Since the BBC has dummed down to the point of being useless,

And very effective it must be too ... dumbed ?

EF

"Egan Fdanck" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 19:46:53 +0100, "Gavin Staples"
wrote:

Since the BBC has dummed down to the point of being useless,

And very effective it must be too ... dumbed ?

EF


That was a typo:-) I saw it the second after I clicked send. I should have
run the spell checker through it. It is nice to see the attention to detail
on this ng:-)

Gavin.

Gavin Staples wrote:

I know what you mean. Thank God for this website.


What website?



--
Brian Wakem

Felly sgrifennodd Gavin Staples :
I know what you mean. Thank God for this website.

Which web site? Am I missing something?

Adrian

--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais uk

Adrian D. Shaw wrote:
Felly sgrifennodd Gavin Staples :
I know what you mean. Thank God for this website.

Which web site? Am I missing something?

Adrian


Yes. A sympathetic view of well-intentioned human
fallibility. All right, it's a newsgroup, not a website. Stop taking
the ****.

Tudor Hughes

In message , Gavin Staples
writes
There is a nice little debate going on , on the TWO website. I am not
putting it on here though. However, many have said that last night was the
coldest June night in 50 years or more. Several places had an air frost.
Whats the verdict on this one. My minimum was 6C by the way so I can
hardly lay claim to anything here.

Certainly not in true for Coventry Gavin

Our minimum of 3.6C was the coldest June night since 1991 (0.4C) but
there have been 11 June nights colder in the past 50 years up here ---

our coldest June nights since 1892 have been

-0.6C 1936
0.0C 1975
0.4C 1991
0.6C 1989
1.7C 1898,1893,1902

--
Steve Jackson
Bablake Weather Station
Coventry
UK
http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/bws

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 18:53:21 +0100, "Philip Eden"
philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:


7. Much more unusual is the sea-level pressure which got close to 1039
mbar this morning ... probably (haven't done an exhaustive check) the
highest
since 7th June 1962.

1036.5 this morning in mid-Dorset
Cheers Robin