On Dec 27, 10:40*am, Bonos Ego wrote:
The Met Office have given themselves a pat on the back forecasting the
recent cold spell.

Personally I think they did ok, but could do better.

They seem to leave issuing some of the warnings to the last minute, or
even overnight when people are asleep for the following morning (Devon
& Cornwall freezing rain 23 December), which is not good enough. The
warnings should have been issued in time to be included in any local
news bulletins the evening before.

What do others think?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...t20091223.html

Widespread heavy snow and icy conditions, 17–23 December 2009

23 December 2009
Background

From around mid-December, cold air from eastern Europe dominated the
UK weather. This was to be the start of a cold spell which would
continue up to the start of the Christmas period.

Widespread frost, ice and snow affected some areas.

* * * The first significant snowfall occurred on the night of Thursday
17 December and into Friday 18 December.
* * * Parts of south-east England, Yorkshire and north-east England
were badly affected, with particularly deep snow in parts of East
Anglia.

By the weekend of 19/20 December the cold air had spread across much
of the North Atlantic, effectively surrounding the UK.

* * * On Sunday 20 December heavy snow from the north-west affected
western areas of Scotland, northern England, and Northern Ireland.
* * * On Monday 21 December heavy snow affected southern areas of
England during the late afternoon and evening, as milder air from the
south mixed with the cold air already across the UK. Snow was
particularly heavy during the evening rush hour in parts of Hampshire.
* * * On Tuesday 22 December eastern areas of Scotland had frequent
snow showers.

By Tuesday night less-cold conditions began to move into parts of
south-west England. However, the wintry problems were far from over as
rain fell onto frozen road surfaces leading to ice on many routes in
Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

Generally, I think they did very well with the severe weather
warnings, in what turned into a very difficult situation. The first
warnings of snow in the east and SE from 36 hours out allowed anyone
with sense to react to possible heavy snow and I think many did.
Unfortunately, some simply didn't.

The ice warnings that followed have been generally excellent and this
was well transmitted to the general public via TV and radio. Here, the
main difficulty was the timings of the rain, just before the rush
hour, for 3 days running in my area. Extremely unusual. The forecasts
were very good, but the timing of the rain washed salt off the roads
and allowed ice to form and caught people out who were travelling to
work. The workers were not in any way wrong setting off, they were
just very unfortunate to encounter conditions which were well
forecast, but couldn't easily have been prevented by local
authorities. The main roads were well gritted down here, but the
timing of the rain meant that all the roads could not be gritted again
in the space of an hour, leading to many minor accidents.

Overall, I feel that in this circumstance, they are correct to give
themselves some positive publicity. I give them a pat on the back too.