On Jan 10, 9:56*am, John Hall wrote:
In article
,

*mattmaz writes:
From here in Ashford, Kent, I can very much confirm that it was a non-
event. Not particularly surpeised by this either - I was looking at an
array of different radar charts through the evening last night &
wondering just where the met office were expecting the heavy snow to
appear from. I am no weather expert, and would never pretend to be,
but if I can look at these radar that are available & make a judgement
that yet another warning is incorrect it makes you wonder which radar
etc they use ? It can't be their own one ...... lol

Presumably they were expecting something to develop, which failed to do
so. Radar tells you what is happening now, and is an excellent guide for
the next hour or two, but it is going to be of limited help for say over
6 hours ahead. Remember the heavy dump in parts of the south last
Tuesday (was it?) evening and night? A few hours before that began,
there was little to be seen on the radar.

I can remember the better part of fifty years of forecasts of snow,
which seemed to fail to materialise more often than not. The forecasts
are much better now, but still fall well short of perfection. I think
that people need to accept that forecasting snow is very difficult, and
that a substantial fraction off forecasts are always going to be wrong.
The models are excellent at forecasting the pressure patterns, but a lot
of human input is still needed to put the "weather" on.

I love snow, but the non-stop moaning from certain quarters when they
don't get as much as they were hoping for is starting to get on my
nerves. Whatever happened to the traditional British stiff upper lip?
--
John Hall
* * * * * *"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people
* * * * * * from coughing."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)



Don't get me wrong John, I'm not moaning about a lack of snow - we
have had enough snow here as it is & didn't need any more of the
stuff. My point is that the heavy snow we did have yesterday morning,
there was no warning for, yet when they put a warning out later the
same day, nothing happens. It is this inconsistency with the warning
system over the years which is tending to make people ignore such
warnings, which could be a problem if there ever was a real severe
weather event in the future.
I was staying in Boscastle during the flood in 2004, and I don't
remember seeing a warning before that either come to think of it. Yes,
a freak event, but surely something could have be picked up to set
alarm bells ringing, if even an hour or so before the "event". Maybe a
re-think of the way the warning system works would be better, I'm not
sure how but I think it needs addressing.

Matt