Hogmany celebrations in Scotland

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I was very dissapointed to see that the aweful weather in parts of Scotland will spoil the Hogmany celebrations. Make the best of things everybody, and also in the northern parts of Ireland, too.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

Move to the “Sunny South East”, where even the rain is warmer ! [That,s how we know Summer has arrived ]

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

Wind is pretty brisk here in South Yorkshire, but recently I haven’t had a still day.

We never had named storms when I was younger, now we seem to have them all too often.

The met office turned down my idea for naming system which was easy to follow and non gender based…

Storm Monday,  Storm Tuesday, Storm Wednesday……….

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I think that storm names should roll over from year to year, then there would be a chance of having one named after SWMBO, as it is they start again at A every year.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I worked with a Scotsman, and he asked me what Eastbourne was like, I said very nice, but aren’t you going to retire in Scotland? He replied “too bloody cold”.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

SW of Manchester. Overnight cloud burst. Drove through 8 or 9 substantial main road floods. Livestock standing in flooded fields. It’s w e t.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Yes the floods in Manchester were terrible.

[Chris CrewParticipant @chriscrew66644]

The weather warnings should really be more localised. The club I belong to cancelled the new year’s day run because of the warnings but in the event I think we have run the trains in worse weather than we had yesterday in this area.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

It extremely difficult or impossible to make such small-scale, local weather forecasts as you might want.

Weather systems are many hundreds of miles across, and very chaotic within their overall patterns. Especially when crossing land, they contain large- and small- scale internal irregularities and are heavily affected by external factors, primarily topography.

Nature works to large-scale patterns, not decimal-point precision (or accuracy?), NGR-scale land areas and timetables! Nor does it worry about mere ‘ooman leisure activities, be those firework displays or running miniature railways.

It is unfair on the meteorologists to think they can supply us with precise, purely-local predictions that always suit our wishes. (I am not one, by the way, so have no vested professional interest!)

 

For example…..

I live in a coastal area, a triangle of land projecting into the English Channel, backed by an E-W ridge averaging 400 feet height. That ridge and the exposure to the sea tends to keep the area a tiny bit warmer in cold Winter weather than North of it; but we are also more exposed to the South-West winds than inland.

It also means we are usually less affected by the severe storms of the sort we have seen in recent times, because the centres of many of these cross the more Northerly parts of British Isles.

Yet we don’t have and can’t have specific forecasts for our small area, merely a couple of hundred square miles at most; just somewhat general predictions for our part of the South-West Peninsula. Indeed, because we are on an a coast open to the ocean that spawns Britain’s main weather systems, the Shipping Forecast (100 years old this year!) often gives a fairer indication of what to expect on that peninsula, than a general weather forecast for a broad, very long swathe of solid, hilly Southern England.

—

There is though, potentially one very big fly in the ointment. I do not know if this is correct but I have been told the BBC obtains its weather forecasts from some service in the USA or Canada. If so I think that wrong and shameful, but it would partially explain forecasts being much more general than might be possible. It should be using our own Meteorological Office, and indeed it does for the Shipping Forecast.

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

I completely understand what has been said above about forecasts not being possible on a local scale.

But the weather forecasting industry spends fortunes on computing power to model this chaotic atmosphere and still can’t get things right.

I reckon we should go back to Bill Froggatt with his pine cones and seaweed.  It was just as good and more entertaining.

The whole idea of being able to forecast what the weather will do is snakeoil salesman territory, just look out the window and dress accordingly.

 

 

[Speedy Builder5]

On Speedy Builder5 Said:

SW of Manchester. Overnight cloud burst. Drove through 8 or 9 substantial main road floods. Livestock standing in flooded fields. It’s w e t.

I drove from Lymm to Warrington after the heavy rain. Would have been better off with a boat. Fortunately the car kept going (just), stuttered once. The Bridgewater canal has burst its bank in Dunham, lots of roads in the area flooded. They seem to have stopped emptying the gullies around here, some have grass growing out of them. On Tuesday night water was coming out of some of them like a fountain. Reckon these are up stream of a blockage.

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