On Feb 5, 1:52*pm, Liam Steele wrote:
On 05/02/12 13:17, Graham P Davis wrote:









On 05/02/12 12:13, Liam Steele wrote:
On 05/02/12 07:08, Graham P Davis wrote:
. . . showed a table of snow depths that she said were from Met Office
stations this morning where the top depth was 16cm from Church Fenton..
She then said it was probably due to drifting. Nice of her to criticise
her colleagues on breakfast TV.

Graham

Did she say something along the lines of 'This reported value may be
high due to drifting' or 'For goodness sake, my idiotic colleagues at
the Met Office have reported a snow depth of 16cm which has clearly been
affected by drifting, but because they are unprofessional and have no
sense, they have reported it as an actual snow depth'.

If it was the former, then I don't really see it as a criticism, and I
doubt 99.999% of the public would either. Okay, you could argue that she
didn't have to show it, but we all know that people on TV like to quote
the highest values of snow/wind/temperature they can, so I'm guessing
that's the reason it was shown.

I don't really see it as unprofessional, but I've never worked at the MO
and so accept that they may feel differently!

I wonder whether it was meant as an implied criticism or, perhaps, she
has never had to measure snow depth and doesn't know how to do it
herself. Therefore she may have just guessed that they stuck the ruler
in the wrong place. It wouldn't be the first time that a TV
meteorologist had shown themselves to be ignorant of observing practices.

You're probably right that not many viewers would have recognised it as
a criticism but, assuming these were manual observations, I'm damned
sure the observers themselves would have taken it that way. However, why
did she say they're Met Office reports and then imply that they weren't
to be trusted?

I'm guessing it's that she's never measured snow depth, or assumes it's
not a human observation, so may be affected by drifting. I can't imagine
she'd purposefully criticize the MO on air, but you never know! Am I
right in thinking all BBC weather presenters have to do the MO trainee
forecaster course? If so, I'd have thought they'd cover observing
practices in there?

--
Liam (Milton Keynes)http://physics.open.ac.uk/~lsteele/

If it's a Met Office AWS then the snow depth will be measured using a
sonic measuring device. Obviously, it can't detect whether it's
measuring level snow or a drift which, I presume, prompted Ms Tobin's
remark. There are so few manned Met offices these days that I would
assume most, if not all, of the values shown were measured in this
way. It would have been better if she had explained this rather than
leaving room for the doubts shown above!