News 24 forecast tonight ".... the band of rain moving down from the N.W
will be narrow but it will be wet rain" !!!!
Not said with as much as a wink or a smile. Not sure of the young chap's
name. Hope it was tongue in cheek.

Dave

"Dave.C" wrote in message
.uk...
News 24 forecast tonight ".... the band of rain moving down from the N.W
will be narrow but it will be wet rain" !!!!
Not said with as much as a wink or a smile. Not sure of the young chap's
name. Hope it was tongue in cheek.

Dave


In the forecast around midnight, the map showed Norwich to be on the North
Norfolk coast and newcastle in the North Sea. Possibly Aberdeen was also
afloat

Yep - one of those - if you touch the water, it might be wet comments.

A disclaimer should be made by anyone attempting to do a long range
forecast.

Some people out there seem rather confused. They seem to believe them
hook, line and sinker. All the media have to do is put out a bit of
doom-mongering, and people's tongues start waggling.

The atmosphere up there is 'chaotic'
There is no way, that even the most powerful models or computer system
can forecast with any accuracy the positions of Low and High pressure
way ahead into the future.
Those weather systems do not exist yet. All they can do is follow
trends

During complex situations (especially the rain/sleet/snow boundary area
during the winter months) we can see just how difficult it is to
forecast the next twenty four hours.

Why is it, that people seem so desperate to want to know what the
weather will be doing in four or five months time. I understand people
like aircraft pilots needing to know the weather in advance for
flights... but why invite idle speculation. We're heading into the
autumn / winter period, we'll find out soon enough !!

I think some people are being blinded by their strong wish for an
interesting winter / lots of snow, etc etc

For pete's sake, keep Critical and Rational thinking as a top priority.
It is essential

BlueLightning wrote:

Yep - one of those - if you touch the water, it might be wet comments.

A disclaimer should be made by anyone attempting to do a long range
forecast.

Some people out there seem rather confused. They seem to believe them
hook, line and sinker. All the media have to do is put out a bit of
doom-mongering, and people's tongues start waggling.

The atmosphere up there is 'chaotic'
There is no way, that even the most powerful models or computer system
can forecast with any accuracy the positions of Low and High pressure
way ahead into the future.
Those weather systems do not exist yet. All they can do is follow
trends

During complex situations (especially the rain/sleet/snow boundary area
during the winter months) we can see just how difficult it is to
forecast the next twenty four hours.

Why is it, that people seem so desperate to want to know what the
weather will be doing in four or five months time. I understand people
like aircraft pilots needing to know the weather in advance for
flights... but why invite idle speculation. We're heading into the
autumn / winter period, we'll find out soon enough !!

I think some people are being blinded by their strong wish for an
interesting winter / lots of snow, etc etc

For pete's sake, keep Critical and Rational thinking as a top priority.
It is essential

It is perfectly possible to forecast a month or so ahead, and has been for
many years. You just have to use different methods from short- and
medium-range forecasting and limit yourself to general distributions of
pressure, temperature, etc. You also need to admit that, on some occasions,
the tools you are relying on won't provide you with enough information to
make a reliable forecast. For instance, if you are using SST anomaly
patterns and they are strong you can be fairly confident about forecasting
next month's pressure anomalies, but if the patterns are nondescript you
may have to go for a low-confidence forecast of average weather and hope
for the best.

The difficulty with long-range forecasting for the UK is that it's such a
small place. I remember that, for one January (in the late sixties I
think), the SST patterns correctly predicted strong easterly winds across
the whole of Europe and across the Atlantic to Canada. Unfortunately, the
only small error was over the UK where the winds were southerly.

In some, probably very rare cases, it's possible to forecast trends for
several years. In 1969 I correctly forecast that the severely cold weather
that had affected East Greenland waters for a decade was coming to an end
and, from the beginning of the seventies, Eastern Canada would have a run
of severe winters instead. This was a forecast I would have put money on
but, as a young Civil Servant, I didn't have any! ;-)

--
Graham Davis
Bracknell
It was raining cats and dogs and I fell in a poodle. - Chic
Murray(1919-1985)

OK Graham ,what about this winter then ?

RonB
"Graham P Davis" wrote in message
...
BlueLightning wrote:

Yep - one of those - if you touch the water, it might be wet comments.

A disclaimer should be made by anyone attempting to do a long range
forecast.

Some people out there seem rather confused. They seem to believe them
hook, line and sinker. All the media have to do is put out a bit of
doom-mongering, and people's tongues start waggling.

The atmosphere up there is 'chaotic'
There is no way, that even the most powerful models or computer system
can forecast with any accuracy the positions of Low and High pressure
way ahead into the future.
Those weather systems do not exist yet. All they can do is follow
trends

During complex situations (especially the rain/sleet/snow boundary area
during the winter months) we can see just how difficult it is to
forecast the next twenty four hours.

Why is it, that people seem so desperate to want to know what the
weather will be doing in four or five months time. I understand people
like aircraft pilots needing to know the weather in advance for
flights... but why invite idle speculation. We're heading into the
autumn / winter period, we'll find out soon enough !!

I think some people are being blinded by their strong wish for an
interesting winter / lots of snow, etc etc

For pete's sake, keep Critical and Rational thinking as a top priority.
It is essential

It is perfectly possible to forecast a month or so ahead, and has been for
many years. You just have to use different methods from short- and
medium-range forecasting and limit yourself to general distributions of
pressure, temperature, etc. You also need to admit that, on some
occasions,
the tools you are relying on won't provide you with enough information to
make a reliable forecast. For instance, if you are using SST anomaly
patterns and they are strong you can be fairly confident about forecasting
next month's pressure anomalies, but if the patterns are nondescript you
may have to go for a low-confidence forecast of average weather and hope
for the best.

The difficulty with long-range forecasting for the UK is that it's such a
small place. I remember that, for one January (in the late sixties I
think), the SST patterns correctly predicted strong easterly winds across
the whole of Europe and across the Atlantic to Canada. Unfortunately, the
only small error was over the UK where the winds were southerly.

In some, probably very rare cases, it's possible to forecast trends for
several years. In 1969 I correctly forecast that the severely cold weather
that had affected East Greenland waters for a decade was coming to an end
and, from the beginning of the seventies, Eastern Canada would have a run
of severe winters instead. This was a forecast I would have put money on
but, as a young Civil Servant, I didn't have any! ;-)

--
Graham Davis
Bracknell
It was raining cats and dogs and I fell in a poodle. - Chic
Murray(1919-1985)

Ron Button wrote:

OK Graham ,what about this winter then ?


SST anomalies hint at more easterlies than usual but the pattern is too
feeble at the moment to bet on anything much out of the ordinary. With the
cold pool to the south of Newfoundland being so weak it could vanish before
the winter arrives.

I'm also bothered by the overall warmth of the North Atlantic. Are the SST
anomaly patterns that I saw used successfully thirty to forty years ago to
forecast pressure anomalies going to be valid in the current warm regime? I
think Paul Bartlett also made this point a while ago.

More runs are needed!

--
Graham Davis
Bracknell