"Klara" wrote in message
...
http://www.metcheck.com/

Tried 'drying time': well, no washing for me this week...
Could have a chilly BBQ on Friday, though.

Then I tried the 'rest of 2005' link, which turned out in fact to be
the next 12 months - and found nothing but rain, with just a few
isolated sunny periods - now, that would really depress me, if I
believed it....


Reality check on metcheck:

Wonderful drying weather all week so far ...

still waiting to find out about Friday's BBQ

but:

"Predictions of a scorching summer today prompted the Government to send
out a warning on how to cope in a heatwave.
The Met Office has issued an alert that temperatures in July and August
could match the 101F recorded in Kent in 2003.
Now the Department of Health says it will distribute leaflets telling
people how to keep cool and protect themselves from the sun."

I think I'll believe this one - after all, I'd rather be happy until the
forecast is proved wrong...



Yeah, but look at it this way - the pessimist is at worst proved right, but
in the normal run of things can only ever be pleasantly surprised!

As for the accuracy of long-term weather predictions, take them with a pinch
of salt (of the kind of size that would cause medical problems).

Weather is a "chaotic system", and one outcome of this is that you can
predict with a fair degree of accuracy for the short term (IIRC it's either
3 or 5 days that is the maximum reliable forecast), and also roughly
predictable in the long term (ie it will be "cold" this winter, "hot" next
summer, "cold" the next winter), but there is just no accuracy that can be
assigned to these long term forecasts. The chaotic bit comes in because
very tiny differences to the input parameters of the calculations can have
wildly disproportionate effect on the outcome of the prediction.

ISTR that the post-mortem that took place after the met office's failure to
predict the 1987 hurricanes resulted in a lot of interest in the chaotic
nature of weather (in the mathematical sense), so I'm surprised that the met
office still issue these highly specific long-term forecasts. I hope that
they do because of more reliable models, and it's not just pressure to
predict.


--
Richard Sampson

mail me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk