"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