In article ,
Paul C writes:
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:19:29 -0000, "GKN"
wrote:

Paul.
The point I am trying to make is what percentage of the population lives at
Aviemore, and why report on the coldest place anyways. It is hardly a true
representation of the situation countrywide.
Yes there has been some difficult travelling conditions around the country
over the last ten days but the attitude always seems to be, lets go for the
worst case we can report when 90% of the population hardly ever see these
conditions where they actually live.

I don't know what the population of Aviemore is, but surely one can't
ignore readings from sparsely populated areas? Otherwise all those
readings from current and former RAF airfields would have to be
disregarded. That said, I agree that the hype merchants in the media
have tried to make such a reading out to be rarer than it is.

Quite what the population of Aviemore has to do with the lowest
temperature I really don't know.

We've all been subjected to endless reports of the 2 inches of snow in
London so I suppose that kept you happy.

I understand that it was 6 inches, which is certainly sufficiently rare
in London to be of interest.

By the way I had to laugh at the radio reports this morning describing
the bad weather in the "southern half of Britain", which turned out to
be that part of Britain from the West Midlands of England southwards.
That part of the British mainland is the southern fifth - goodness
knows what proportion it would be if the Northern Isles were also
taken into consideration.



You are thinking in terms of distance from south to north, presumably.
But if you think in terms of land area (which seems to me more valid) it
would probably be more than 50%.
--
John Hall
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless
information."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)