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