It is a very long time since I have felt as furiously angry as I did yesterday evening.
Paul Simons told us in Weather eye: Weather pattern about-face that “A deep depression will batter northwest Scotland with heavy rain and wind, while the southeast corner of England will enjoy a remarkably warm day, possibly reaching 27C (81F)” The map, taken from The Times, shows yesterdays Met Office regional outlook. We sit just under the bottom of the nice white cloud in between Sheffield & Manchester. The forecast for NW England says “mainly dry at first with some brighter spells but turning cloudier & with isolated showers during the afternoon.” Local radio confirmed this - basically a dry day.
I had my doubts by the time I reached the bus stop. There were some squalls strong enough to really rattle the glass & clouds were beginning to race in.
Well, it was certainly all completely overcast by 1 o’clock & there were vicious bursts of wind. Rain threatened, a few spots fell, enough to keep you inside unless you had to go from A to B.
At about 6.30 the rain started to fall with a vengeance, so heavy you could not go out – an umbrella was useless with the wind. Even when it eased off after about 20 minutes, it was still falling steadily & running down the pavements deep enough to soak your feet. The rain (and squalls) kept up for at least an hour & a half – when I got home you could not see the tops of even the closest hill, & for a while even the tops of trees were hidden. And so I arrived home, feet, trousers below the knee, bags, gloves, ringing wet.
Not the worst we have had this summer, but not what was forecast either – many, including me, had planned the day accordingly.
Just to make matters worse, I listened to the detailed account of the past days weather on Radio 4 at half past midnight, hoping for some sort of explanation of what had gone wrong. Not even a mention. Just that Kent had had temperatures in the high 20s (but they’ll be back to where they should be today) plus parts of poor old Scotland had had near-gale conditions. No mention of the weather in the rest of the country.
This morning Radio 5, just before 7.30 am told us that the country would be mainly dry today, with possibly some patchy rain in the south east. Over on Radio 4 Sarah Montague was telling us that “Most places are going to be fine but there will be showers in the North West”.
We have been told, over & over: Anyone relying on the weather this summer is taking a tremendous gamble. The jet stream has been behaving oddly all year, winning the battle with the Azores highs; we do not have enough data on the ocean temperatures which can play an (as yet little understood) important part in our weather; there is an El Nino going on.
And, as Brian Sharman pointed out in a letter to The Times on August 4: As climate change would presumably make the weather more difficult to forecast, inaccurate weather forecasts might be proof of climate change.
Well, I have been unable to get the Met Office website to tell me what they mean by isolated showers, but yesterdays one did not meet my criteria for isolation in either space or time. But even if they cannot get the forecasts right, the least they could do is put an easily located landlubbers glossary of terms on their website, as they do already for the marine forecasts.
Link
Related post
