Martin,
In a word, no. The models were not very good on this detail at all,
unfortunately. GFS was perhaps the closest in terms of location of the rain
last Tuesday, but had totals an order of magnitude too low (one would expect
lower totals than expected given its resolution, so therefore it is unlikely
to resolve the fine detail and storms). The UKMO Global and NAE had the rain
confined to the south coast of Kent and Sussex and over the Channel - on the
day the NAE had a better idea of location but not intensity (again no doubt
a resolution issue). Certainly nothing I saw up to the day before at least
had anywhere near the right totals in the right area, although our models
(UKMO) did suggest that where the rain was forecast to fall there would be
some high totals locally. EC was somewhere inbetween, and was quite good on
location but again poor on totals.
Essentially, there was no signal of the high totals that fell, and this
prompted the BBC broadcasters to apologise live on air for the poor
forecast! Rather like the recent Hastings flooding, another event not
forecast by models or humans (but half the rainfall this time round). I
guess you can't win them all, but it wasn't too clever really....
Mike (MO Forecaster)


"Martin Rowley" wrote in message
...
... from 06Z SYNOP listing (ex OgiMet), Farnborough ended up with 60.2 mm
in the 24hr to 06Z this morning (16th), much of that during the latter
half of the afternoon & through the evening of the 15th. I fancy, looking
back at the radarnet, that somewhere will have had even more - might just
be picked up on the COL network. Fascinating event. All sorts of
dynamics/thermodynamics involved I fancy - I'll leave that to the clever
people here to sort out :-)

Would be interested to know if any of the models picked this up? Wasn't
looking too closely over the past few days.

Martin.


--
Martin Rowley
West Moors, East Dorset (UK): 17m (56ft) amsl
Lat: 50.82N Long: 01.88W
NGR: SU 082 023