In article ,
Martin wrote:

The Dutch Met Office does but they try to cover the whole country with
just one forecast.

That's reasonable, given its size and lack of terrain, but they
really should have some adjustments for the times and probabilities
that a front is passing through or hovering there.

Temperatures between the north and south and between the coast and the
east can very different.

Other than due to the qualifications I mention above, not really.
The whole country's no larger than the south-eastern corner of
England, and the weather is no more variable over it.

Sort of. It was because Old Fred had many decades of experience for
that particular location, and used his subconscious. The general
forecasts were based on the science, which was basic, and the data,
which was almost non-existent. They were little better than crude
guesswork.

Experimental long range forecasting was 51% correct. Short range was
much better than pure luck. Observations were made several times a day
at many locations in UK and all over Europe and on three weather ships
that were stationed mid Atlantic.

Heck - I can do much better than pure luck, using no equipment and
no calculation! It wasn't until the satellites that even the short-
term forecast became significantly better than "The same as the day
before". And THAT is the fair test.

The forecaster mentally compared the current situation with what the
forecaster remembered happening next, when the situation occurred on
previous occasions. The forecasters on airfields didn't spend their
lives in one location. It's a long time ago but AFAIR they spent
around three years before moving somewhere else. On the weather ships
it was less than three years.

The former is what I said. I will take your word for the latter!

My first job, in 1966, was physically within the Met. Office, and I
was programming a Mercury. It was completely inadequate for anything
as tricky as a forecast, though that was the sort of programming I
was trying to do.

When I left in 1964, they already had a KDF9. The Mercury was used
for modeling

And it wasn't powerful enough even for that. In one of my courses,
I point out that my hearing aids are 10,000 times more powerful
than a Mercury, and a damn sight less than 10,000th of the size!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.