On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:09:02 +0100, Col wrote:

"John Hall" wrote in message
...


And in Surrey too. The winters from 1970-1 to 1975-6 were all mild, and
1974-5 was exceptionally so. Then the winters turned successively
colder over the next three years. February 1978 had a notable blizzard
in the SW (probably the worst in that region since March, 1891), but
the snow didn't reach Surrey or London (even though the forecast on the
preceding evening had been for it to do so).

Yes, I've heard about that.
It's a good job this group didn't exist back then, Lawrence would have
been on suicide watch when that one failed to happen

I recall a similar blizzard near that time but 1978 would have been too
early. I reckon the one I'm thinking of would have happened a year later.
Whatever year it was, I took wellington boots to work in the morning so
as to be ready for the trudge home through the deep snow. As soon as I
saw the charts in the Met Office entrance hall, I thought, "it ain't
gonna happen!" According to the thickness pattern, the low appeared to be
situated in the left exit of one jet and the right entrance to another
and would be steered SE into France and miss us. Which is what happened.

A while later, I reran analyses and forecasts, modifying data, and
produced a report on what I'd found which, if I remember rightly, was
very little. Although it was obvious to me from the charts that morning
that the snow would miss us, I couldn't tweak the data going into the
Rectangle model to provide the correct answer.




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Graham Davis, Bracknell
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