In message , Norman Lynagh
writes
John Hall wrote:

In message , Graham
writes
The warning for tomorrow is for ice not snow.
Are you saying you've missed all the snow? The snow here in South
Oxfordshire hasn't been particularly deep, but it's obvious that
other areas have had deep snow.

The warning for tomorrow is for ice not snow.
Are you saying you've missed all the snow? The snow here in South
Oxfordshire hasn't been particularly deep, but it's obvious that
other areas have had deep snow.

No we had around 7 cms yesterday, what I'm saying is why has there
been a snow warning for this area for today (from 10.30) when it's
been dry all day. The front coming up from the South has only
reached this area in the last hour. The snow from it is slight and
patchy, surely doesn't warrant any snow warning?


When a snow warning covers a substantial area, presumably the timing
for the warning to commence has to be the earliest time that the snow
could reach any part of the area, which could be some hours before it
is expected to reach the farther edge of the area. You could break
the area down into smaller adjoining areas and give each one its own
start time, but that could lead to a confusing plethora of warnings.


The following seems to be a much better approach to the problem

https://www.weather.gov/

Drilling down gets to some very detailed information, specific to your
location of interest.

Yes, that's excellent. I suppose the sheer size of the US made it
essential to do something on those lines.

I appreciate that this requires Internet access but we can't stick in
the quill pen era forever.


I suppose it's mostly the elderly who still rely primarily on TV weather
forecasts on which warnings are shown, along perhaps with teletext or
whatever it's now called. But if they could see a top-level map on their
TV like the US one, that should give them as much information as the
current system does, even if they lacked the ability to drill down.
--
John Hall
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history
that man can never learn anything from history."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)