On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:20:21 -0700 (PDT), Desperate Dan
wrote:

On Monday, March 18, 2013 7:36:29 AM UTC, wrote:
"Dave Ludlow" wrote in message

...

On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:47:09 +0000, jbm wrote:
On 17/03/2013 16:02, Paul wrote:
Unexpected snow across Oxfordshire has led to criticism of the Met
Office by the county council.
Deputy leader councillor Rodney Rose said there were no warnings in the
overnight forecast and it was their own road sensors which first alerted
them.
He said gritters were eventually sent out but it was too late to stop a
number of crashes across the county.
The Met Office said the situation was "finely balanced" and warnings
were put in place in the early hours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-21821820

Well, that's a new one for the Office Speak Dictionary.

Finely balanced = We haven't got a ****ing clue.

If the responsible officers at the Oxfordshire Council could have been
arsed to actually watch the BBC TV weather forecasts on Saturday
evening instead of waiting for yellow alerts to be sent to them, they
would have known that snow was **in the forecast** for the South
Midlands. If ** I ** knew on Saturday evening that it might snow
there in the early morning, so should they have known, they are paid
to keep an eye on it!
Yes the Met Office should have warned them earlier but FFS, use your
noggins, Council officials, and watch the bloody forecasts from time
to time!!

Well said Dave. But it is the culture now "why weren't we warned" instead of
"right I'm going to get on with it".

Will

You've never worked with councils and warnings then! The guy who says
"I'm going to get on with it", will then have to justify his actions having spent £x
on salt/grit and £y on drivers' overtime etc. If he gets it right he's a hero, but
if he gets it wrong he's on the carpet or worse. I'm willing to bet there's a
council SOP re this type of situation. There's more to this story than meets
the eye. Forecasters are normally overly keen to issue warnings for obvious
reasons. Any "finely balanced" situation would see the forecaster err on the
cautious side.

I agree, there's something missing from this story. Rain turning to
snow on the northern edge (in S England) late in the night was clearly
shown on the evening forecast graphics for 6 am onwards, and the
forecaster (Nick Miller) said watch out for icy patches as
temperatures dip, while waving his hand over... wait for it...
Oxfordshire!

So I too don't understand why a warning wasn't sent out to Councils
until 3 am - assuming that is in fact what happened. But a warning to
subscribing Councils and a public yellow warning aren't necessarily
the same thing.

--
Dave
Fareham