What Weather? - Which Weather!
IN THE AUGUST 1969 'Which?' appeared a report on 'Weather Forecasting' which noticed that 'early morning forecasts were more accurate than the forecasts the evening before.' It went on to say that compared to some countries the UK does have 'weather which is more fickle' and that 'often, even when the weather was forecast correctly, it did not arrive at the time it was supposed to.'
Now we are given a piece of advice which is as relevant today as it was forty years ago. "If the evening forecast says that it will be sunny the following morning but will get cloudy later and rain in the afternoon, and you wake up to find it cloudy, you can expect it to rain before the afternoon. What has happened is that the weather has moved your way faster than expected." This is a brilliant analysis.
Forty years later the Met Office still has difficulties and noted in September this year that "The world atmosphere is a very tricky thing." But major improvements in forecasting are expected in the next few years with the arrival early next year of a new £33 million supercomputer. So we will have to wait a little for an improvement in the weather
Meanwhile the advice given in the 1969 Which? is well worth heeding.