"Eskimo Will" wrote in message
...

"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
--


I blocked Dawlish long ago. Apart from the irritating way of expressing
himself (well put) He has no input of his own other than boring commentaries
on the constantly changing probabilities. We have an excellent model
interpretation from Darren every morning so the group doesn't need his slant
on the models.

The meteorological professionals input on the other hand are the reason for
my daily viewing since 2003 and long may they continue.