On Fri, 8 Aug 2014 21:56:21 +0100, John Hall
wrote:

In message , Dave Ludlow
writes
This significant rain band was not in last night's forecast at all. The
problem being that the main BBC TV national and local forecasts after
the 10pm news stopped at 4pm Friday and completely ignored this evening
and tonight (leaving us to assume that it would be fine and dry like
the rest of the day). They skipped to Saturday daytime and Sunday, so
even if they'd expected this evening's drenching, you'd never have
known it from the forecast.

Little wonder the BBC/Met Office forecasters regularly come in for
stick when they get such basics wrong.

I suspect it's the fault of the limited time that they were allocated.
With Bertha looming, I can understand their thinking that it was more
important to cover the weekend, for which people would probably want to
be able to decide in advance whether outdoor events should proceed or be
called off.

Well I don't think the three local girls who went for a long bike ride
this afternoon wearing obviously 'dry' clothing would have been too
impressed with that as an excuse, when they returned about 7 pm soaked
to the skin. On Thursday evening, people needed to plan Friday's
activities!

We ended up with 10 mm after a 5 and a half hour period of mainly
moderate rain that was either unpredicted or ignored, only 20 hours
before the event. Bertha or no (and we still don't know what's going
to happen there), that was decidedly unimpressive.

--
Dave
Fareham