David Buttery wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:09:27 +0000, Dave Cornwell wrote:

They do a similar thing here Ken - they give a warning for Essex, then
have a separate warning for Thurrock, which is just a district in the
south of the County. I've never understood why it is singled out. Dave

It's because the warning system is based on top-level local authorities.
Since Thurrock is a unitary authority, it gets its own region. This is
done inflexibly, so that - for example - Nottingham and Nottinghamshire
are two different warning areas, whereas the vast Highland area cannot be
subdivided. I'm not really a fan of doing it this way, but am not sure
what alternatives (if any( exist that would be immediately recognised by
the general public

We in the Highlands are used to forecasts being generalised for one
large area. Indeed I (an very amateur amateur) probably got interested
in trying to work out the weather from other internet resources
NOAA/Unisys/XCWeather/U.S.W etc and more importantly looking out the
window because the Met Office ones seemed (to me) less than accurate.

It doesn't bother me much just now but come the summer when I go to the
west to sail I dont listen to shipping forecasts other than to hear the
lovely lilt of the female voice from Stornoway CG station - the
forecasts are frankly dreadful.Any depressions scudding in off the
Atlantic I can see on synoptic charts from several sources and therefore
plan my runs ashore accordingly.
I asked Fiona Campbell (ex Brit Olympic Sailing squad meteo) at a local
presentation a couple of years back why this was so. She summed it up -
you can have extremely detailed and accurate forecasts but you will need
to pay for them.

We get one at work for the Cromarty Firth and it is much more accurate
(than Met Office info) especially wrt to timings of wind direction and
strength changes than actual strength which you would expect with big
dods of mountains and stuff about. Of course the big organisations who
order this data are paying a premium for it - so.... the moral of the
story is.... cut your tailor according to the cloth you have!