On 13/02/17 11:17, Will Hand wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2017 00:42:13 -0800 (PST)
Crusader wrote:

Looking at the T+72 chart issued in the early hours of today and seeing the
occluded front going apparently backwards across Scandinavia, makes me wonder
how low the knowledge has to get before the MO do some decent training.

Add to that the incessant use of occluded fronts on the BBC forecast with the
warm bumps and cold triangles drawn the wrong way around....I think that
standards are definitely not important any more.

I wonder if these standards reflect the quality of other aspects, such as the
observations and models as these new forecasters go up the chain over the
past few years? Certainly the apparent quality and accuracy of output that is
given as public service forecasts has dropped significantly.

I fear for the future of MO forecasting.


And so you should. Even before I retired analyses were constructed with
"objective fronts" drawn on by computer. The forecaster then could alter
these. I suspect now little alteration is taking place. Some of the worded
scripts are pathetic now. Last Saturday when we had several hours of frontal
snow the forecast talked about "wintry showers". It gave the impression that
the so called forecaster was just translating model output into words. Of
course they are now working on automating that too as well
(intelligent autotext). I fear for the the future of the MO full stop. I can see
it all breaking up in 10 years :-(


When I was in Met O 2b, I found that they'd been working on automated
shipping forecasts from the 10-level model before I joined them at the
beginning of 1978.


--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks. [Retd meteorologist/programmer]
Web-site: http://www.scarlet-jade.com/
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would
not have enough to live upon. [Samuel Butler]