"Tudor Hughes" wrote in message
oups.com...


Tuesday night I was chatting to a jazz singer at the end of a pub
gig and it turned out he worked for Electricité de France, who seem to
own rather a lot of the Grid, etc in the southeast. "I seriously
shouldn't be showing you this," he said, "it's not intended for the
public," and got out his mobile with a very specific severe weather
warning message for electricity companies on it. Presumably the
company pay heavily for this service, which he couldn't confirm, being
an engineer and not an accountant. My guess is that there are careful
considered warnings for paying customers and a slapdash cover-your-arse
one for the general public. Whenever I see one I just say "yeah, yeah"
etc etc. It's pointless we weather enthusiasts getting hot under the
collar over these, because can draw our own conclusions from the data.
Joe Public, though, may have more justifiable reasons for complaint.
The Met Office cries wolf far too often.

A certain amount of 'arse covering' would be expected, possibly even
desirable for general forecasts. After all, it is better to be warned of
something that doesn't happen than to not be warned of something that
*does*. You have to remember that the 'customer' for these forecasts
aren't us weather enthusiasts but the great unwashed public who wouldn't
know orographic rainfall from a slap in the face with a wet fish.

However......
Take it too far and err too much on the side of caution and the 'cry wolf'
scenario raise it's ugly head as you quite rightly point out. It's a difficult
balance to get right, but conditions *do* appear to have quite severe,
at least locally in parts of E.Yorkshire although that can hardly justify the
much more widespread severe weather warnings.

Col
--
Bolton, Lancashire.
160m asl.



Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.