In article ,
Jake wrote:
On Tue, 27 Aug 2013 20:29:11 +0100, David Hill
wrote:
On 27/08/2013 18:03, Sacha wrote:

Thunder and now rain - no lightning yet. Stair rods of water bouncing
off the greenhouse roofs, so I hope everything in the garden soaks it
all up and has a lovely, refreshing drink.

No thanks Sacha, please keep it down there,
I've spent almost 5 hours yesterday and a further 2 hours this afternoon
watering and feeding the dahlias out the field, that seems to be a
problem with pots and coir,.
David from a pleasant, dry side of Swansea Bay.

I'd just like the Met Office to make up its mind. I know we can check
forecasts by different "providers" and there are some which are more
reliable but yesterday I saw "Dippy Derek" on BBC Wales saying you and
I will be dry till at least the weekend, then a national BBC presenter
saying you and I will get soaked tomorrow, the BBC weather site saying
only you will be getting wet and the Met Office web site warning of
rain for us both. That's four different forecasts from the same b*****
place within 5 minutes!

And attempting to match your desire is PRECISELY the reason that
the reports keep changing!

What most people will not admit (though most realise it) is that
predicting the weather is intrinsically a statistical matter, and
there is absolutely no possibility of giving definite, reliable
forecasts. What is more, the unreliability is not purely in
matters of degree, but in kind.

Back in the days when they concentrated on describing the likely
movements and properties of air masses, the presentation was
better (though the data available were MUCH worse). At least
the Met. Office's web page has improved by being less definite
in giving the probability of precipitation, but a reliable
forecast would need to be highly probabilistic and conditional.
I would dearly love to see them provide such a page for the
general public.

Note that this isn't something that can be improved by better
science, data, supercomputers or anything else - it's a basic
property of the problem and is insoluble in an absolute sense.
Pure mathematicians will know what I mean by that.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.