19 July 2022 (Tuesday) - A Bit Of A Rant (sorry...)

I had a plan to take the dogs to the woods first thing this morning, but having slept far better than I had expected it was already far too hot by the time I woke. So I made brekkie and wound myself up with the weather forecasts…

• When one goes to the doctor with a sore throat, one does not expect to be prescribed with haemorrhoid ointment.
• When one takes one’s PC to an IT consultant to have more RAM installed, one does not expect to have the CD drive thrown away.
• When one opens one’s cornflakes box at breakfast, one does not expect to find marmalade.
• When one buys a goldfish from the pet shop, one does not expect to receive a tortoise. 

Why is this? Because we have expectations. If someone bills themselves as a professional/expert then we feel they should be able to do what they say they can. So why do we put up with such shoddy weather forecasting?

This morning The Hastings Observer (the local newspaper for Hastings) posted a warning on their Facebook page: “Extreme heat' warning in Sussex. Temperatures could hit 35°C today”. This is seven degrees cooler than they had been scaremongering last week.

And the chap who runs the UK Weather Forecasts Facebook page was speculating about whether today’s temperatures would break records. Records that last week he was adamant would be smashed.

 

Yesterday I said: “Today was hot, but I followed the Met Office’s feed for Maidstone and the highest actual reported local temperature was four degrees less than the local predictions had been”. The same turned out to be true today, and for Hastings and Ashford as well. And the hottest recorded temperature was well below the predictions

 

I’m not trying to belittle the heatwave, but weather forecasting boils my piss. It simply cannot be done to the degree of accuracy that is claimed. Four degrees can be the difference between taking the dogs for a walk and not taking them out.

And it isn’t just temperatures. Take for example our walk on the Romney Marsh on 2 May 2021 when despite only a nine per cent chance of rain we all got soaked in the downpour (as the dogs cowered from the hailstones), or the walk on 30 May 2021 when exactly the same thing happened again.

At brekkie time that chap who runs the UK Weather Forecasts Facebook page was posting photos of all the thunderstorms that had happened overnight; thunderstorms that a day or so ago he was adamant wouldn’t happen

 

If you cannot forecast a temperature with any accuracy, give a range rather than a number. Or just say “very hot”. If you can’t predict rain (which demonstrably meteorologists can’t), then don’t attempt to do so.

But we all put up with it, don’t we?

Don’t forget that we pay for these forecasts either directly through the TV licence fee, or indirectly through taxes which run the met office. I’d love to be as crap at my job as weather forecasters are at theirs… “Oh, WASN’T it a cold, Mr Jones? – what was it in the end? leukaemia? – Oh silly me!” and then we all have a good laugh and go on to stuff up someone else’s life.

I have more faith in a horoscope than I do in a weather forecast. So why do I take so much notice of them?

Apparently this heatwave ends in a day or so… There I go again trusting the weather forecast…