Hi Col,

No they are not a waste of time. How do you think advances in forecasting
are made? You have to produce forecasts beyond five days, even if a
lot of them are questionable in order to gain data to aid further
developments
in forecasting.

I meant they are a waste of time to look at and rely on for a half decent
idea of the weather, at this moment in time anyway. But yes, I'm totally
positive to these LRF's for the reasons *you give* in your post.

How on earth do you think we arrived at the current situation of
having reasonably accurate 5 day forecasts?

He referred to next weeked which is like 6-7 days away.... I don't think the
GFS is very accurate at this range.... only in certain situations. Just my
personal opinion, and then there is this thing of 'outliers' whatever they
call them, basically not the real deal, and looking at some of the vast
differences of the 4 runs in 24 hours sometimes, would back this up.
Within 5 days seems pretty good *in most situations* but tends to be the
limit.. it seems to fall away after that.
If I could have a fiver everytime I see a cold, snowy looking chart for the
SE of England at 120 or 144 hours in the last 5 years, I'd be a rich man!
We never see these great looking charts at sub 48 hours do we?
In NW Europe, these LRF's tend to fall down when the weather starts becoming
very different ... e.g. cold weather situations, when the Azores high
displaces, etc etc. In July, August, see the LRF start showing the Azores
moving up\NE\whatever, nice warm S, sw blah blah, you can rely on it. It's
all common sense. You know when it's gonna be right, you just gotta *have a
clue* .