In article ,
ronaldbutton writes:
Writing as a mere layman ,apart from the ridiculous about turnabouts from
the Met Office

I've thought that the Met Offices 6-15 day forecast has been fairly
consistent for the last few days, though there's likely to be a big
tuirnabout in the one issued tomorrow. But what else can they do when
the weather "changes its mind"? They can't stick with a forecast once
they realise that it is no longer likely to be correct.

what suprises me most is the reliance on the models shown by
the 'experts' on this group.They are pored over and dissected every six
hours with renewed forecasts being issued daily,most of which are wrong
,unless of course we are in a mobile Westerly where models are fairly
irrelevant anyway

I'm certainly no expert, but I find dissecting the models great fun,
which is why I do it. And if you want to forecast, then there's no
alternative to the models, unless you believe in WeatherLawyer's
earthquakes. Of course, the Met Office has one advantage over us, in
that they get to see a lot of data from the ECMWF and their own model
that we amateurs never get to see. (Whereas the GFS seems to go in for
full disclosure.)

It is likely the cost of all this modelling is enormous (although it does
keep a lot of people off the unemployment lists I suppose),

They do produce surprisingly accurate forecasts out to 5-6 days for most
of the time. It's when you try to go beyond that, that it tends to go
pear-shaped. But the marginal extra cost of running the models beyond
5-6 days must be small, and it does quite often produce useful guidance.

so my question is
,what is the point of this slavish reliance on computer models ?, one
forecast issued every 24 hours would more than suffice,and reduce the
chances of getting it wrong by 75% .

Perhaps once every 6 hours, as the GFS does, is a bit excessive. But
things can change a lot in 24 hours, so I think that once every 12 hours
is justifiable.

By the way,is there any of you Met Office employed guys out there ready to
offer an explanation as to why the long forecasts went so bellyup this
weekend....?

RonB

PS Unless there a satisfactory reply within the next 24 hours I shall set
Lawrence upon you !




--
John Hall
"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people
from coughing."
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)