"Gavino" wrote in message
...
"Nick Humphries" wrote in message
o.uk...
Dawlish wrote:
You can't trust any of this stuff. It's speculation on tiny
possibilities; no more.

Well, quite. The fun is in the tracking, the commentary, and watching
those probabilities grow and shrink. And whilst the points you raise
may be valid ones, your personality negates any contribution you make.

Dawlish may have an irritating way of expressing himself (although I find
the childish and insulting reponses to him from Lawrence and the
name-changing idiot to be far more annoying), but he serves a useful
function on this group by urging a clear distinction between forecast,
speculation and fantasy (and reminding us that forecasts should be judged
on
their results).

Forecast, speculation and fantasy are all fine and worthy of discussion
here, but often they are mixed up and it's not always clear which category
some comments fall into. And something which originally looks like a
forecast is often recast after the event as mere speculation when it
doesn't
happen.

It would be useful if people could give some indication of probability
when
making statements about the future. I don't mean necessarily a
mathematical
percentage, simply an informal expression like "likely", "highly likely",
"possible", etc, would do.

All my musings are a commentary on the situation indicating possibilities
and are not always model based (one can talk meteorology without mentioning
models). All commentaries are based on 40 years of professional experience
and are definitely not idle speculation. I also like to try and educate as
well, but sometimes get misunderstood. For example, polar lows can indeed
deposit a foot of level snow and do indeed need to be taken seriously as
they are primarily convective in nature with large flakes of wet sticky snow
which accumulate rapidly. Seen it all before several times. Also talking
about weather should be fun, being continually held to account takes a lot
of the fun out of it. Out of interest I have kill-filed Dawlish, not because
I necessarily disagree with what he says, but because I do not have time for
never-ending discussions which frankly I couldn't resist to join in. So I
have kill-filed for my own sanity really. Selfish perhaps, but I can and I
do. Yes forecasters should ultimately be judged by results, but that is far
too formal for a weather discussion group IMO. FWIW many people take my
weekly Darmoor forecast and I know for a fact some even use it as a primary
source of information for planning, which is a bit scarey (as it is
sometimes wrong, like today), but also rewarding. If they find it
consistently useful, then that is good enough for me! I'm not concerned with
bragging about percentage success ratios, do all that at work assessing
research results etc, I come on here for fun and relaxation TBH but at the
same time to try and help others. Goodness knows why I am now justifying
what I say and do though? :-)

Cheers,

Will
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