John Hall wrote:
In message , Brian Lawrence
writes
On 07/01/2015 10:48, John Hall wrote:
In message , Brian Lawrence
writes
On 06/01/2015 19:50, Malcolm wrote:
snip a load of crap, even dangerous crap considering the alarm that
your forecasts may have engendered among the elderly.
Well yes, but how many 'elderly' will have seen those 'forecasts'?
Quite a few, I would think, if they read papers such as the Daily
Express. (And even the Daily Telegraph isn't above running alarmist
weather stories from time to time.)
Yes, but no one sane should take seriously what the Express says about
weather,
They shouldn't, but probably many do. Not everyone is as clued up about the
weather as the readers of this newsgroup.
and while their readership can be pigeonholed as 'elderly', there are not
that many of them. Actually, there are very few readers for any newspapers
these days - poss. except the Sun, but Sun readers rarely care about the
weather (unless it's presented on page 3.)
Certainly newspaper circulations have been declining in recent years, but I
suspect less amongst the elderly - who tend to be set in their ways (I
include myself in that, before anyone accuses me of being ageist) - than
amongst the young. And - judging by Will's anecdote - I suspect that weather
scare stories spread by word of mouth to many who haven't actually read a
paper. (Often getting misattributed to the Met Office in the process - I
suspect that many still don't realise that there are any other forecasters
and just assume that all forecasts must have originated from the Met Office.)
I don't keep track, who provides weather 'forecasts' for which 'paper
these days? (Clearly if the Telegraph article is by Philip Eden, it's
worth reading - which I usually do).
Philip Eden provides a weekly article for the Sunday Telegraph, but the Daily
and Sunday Telegraph forecasts are by an outfit called Accuweather (and the
forecasts are pretty poor).
Accuweather is one of the biggest (possibly THE biggest) weather companies in
the USA. They are certainly very legitimate players in the business.
Nevertheless, it doesn't surprise me that their forecasts for the UK are poor.
No matter how good the numerical models, a great deal of local knowledge is
needed to get from model output to reasonably reliable forecasts in this
country.
--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
http://peakdistrictweather.org