Bernard Burton wrote:

"Norman Lynagh" wrote in message
...
The medium range models are a continuing source of light entertainment.
The 00z operational runs this morning show the following predictions for
the British Isles for Tue/Wed 17th/18th

ECMWF: Bitterly cold easterlies setting in.
GFS: Very mild SW'lies
GEM: Very strong, cold westerlies with polar maritime air

All that can reasonably deduced from that lot is that, on the basis of
current knowledge, the evolution of the weather pattern that far ahead is
unforecastable to any useful level of reliability at present. Long may that
state of affairs continue :-)

-- Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
http://peakdistrictweather.org
@TideswellWeathr

Never mind the medium range, today's forecasts in BBC R4 have been pretty
useless. Unless my hearing is faulty, the only mention of rain on the 7.55
forecast was some drizzle over Wales. There was already some precipitation in
the SE showing on the radar then, and here we had intrermittent slight
drizzle all night, and this developed into over an hour of moderate rain and
drizzle here, and appeared to be quite widespread on the radar. The models
obviously missed this development, and a lack of a decent covering of 'real'
obs and a dearth of radio soundings makes this type blunder only to be
expected. I noticed too, that the EGLL TAF has almost as many amends as there
were METARS!. On the 1255 forecast I heard a lot about how cold it would be
later in the week, but no mention or apology for the downright duff forecasts
for today.

Drizzling here for much of the day, too, but not mentioned in the forecasts.
The automated forecast for Tideswell gave the probability of precipitation for
most hours as 'less than 5%'. Yesterday, the prediction was for fog all day but
we didn't have any. The models are now very good at predicting the state of the
atmosphere up to about 5 days ahead but the art of translating that into
reliable forecasts seems to have become lost :-(


--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
http://peakdistrictweather.org
@TideswellWeathr