On Feb 5, 4:01*pm, Yokel wrote:
On 05/02/2012 14:59, John Hall wrote:

In ,
* Liam *writes:
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?
She's a Met Office employee, and studied meteorology at Reading
University. But I suspect that course might focus a lot more on the
theoretical side of the subject rather than on practical stuff like
making observations.

If there is no practical content, then things have gone downhill badly
since I studied there. *The University ran its own weather station near
the department buildings and we did things like make pilot balloon
ascents. *We had automatic sensors with dataloggers and there was a
course module on how to properly use and interpret these. *We had
synoptic meteorolgy sessions with practice on how to manually draw up
charts from observations, and discussions - in front of the whole
department, academic staff and all - on how to interpret the
professionally produced analysed and forecast products.

In my time, the Meteorolgy degree was a part one combined with (usually)
Physics. *There was a pure Meteorology degree, but that was "vocational"
and was intended for those already employed by the Met Office or similar
organisations.

It may very well be the case that actual measuring of snow depth was not
done as part of the course - I don't remember ever doing so in spite of
being there when we had the snowy winters of the late 1970s. *But I
cannot imagine that you could go through a course there without at least
being exposed to the protocols in the "Met. Observers Handbook" or
whatever it might be these days.

--
- Yokel -

Yokel posts via a spam-trap account which is not read.

During my spell at RU, in the mid-80s, there was probably an equal
split between Physic-Met and Mathematics-Met. A large part of the
later course was theoretical, although if memory serves correctly
there was a unit on practical observation. There was a field course
involving trips to some windy hill somewhere in the Berkshire downs.
Computational numerics also played an important part. That combined
with the theoretical equations has given us the computer models we all
love and know today.