“Gordon Brown yesterday promised a full review of how the country had coped with the coldest winter for 30 years”
Heckuva a job there Brownie.
From the Telegraph:
Met Office to review forecasts after failing to warn public of fresh snow
The Met Office has admitted that it failed to warn the public of the heavy snow that brought swaths of Britain to a standstill on Wednesday.
Forecasters conceded that they did not spot the widespread snow storms that caused transport disruption and a surge of weather-related accidents until it was too late. Up to six inches fell in parts of the South West, with drifts of 7ft in Wales.
Even when the full extent of the threat was realised, flaws in the Met Office’s bad weather warning system meant that the public were not adequately informed, officials said. The system will now be reviewed.
…
Thousands of Britons endured nightmare journeys to work after waking up to several inches of snow despite reassurances that their regions would escape the worst of the latest flurries.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled at Heathrow, Gatwick and regional airports, while schools that had only just reopened were again forced to shut their doors.
Accident and emergency departments reported “unprecedented” numbers of patients, many suffering suspected fractures after slipping on ice.
An 18-year-old college student who died after locking himself out was last night feared to be the latest casualty of the weather. Police believe Nathan Jobe froze to death after falling from a window while trying to gain access to his home in Mountnessing in Essex.
In the Peak District, pregnant 40-year-old gave birth to a healthy baby boy after a mountain rescue team transported a midwife to her snowbound home. Melanie Pollitt had sought advice on the Mumsnet website about her labour pains before calling for help.
Gordon Brown yesterday promised a full review of how the country had coped with the coldest winter for 30 years, after councils were forced to cut their gritting by a half to conserve dwindling stocks.
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I like Richard North’s (EU Referendum) take on it:
They got it wrong and keep getting it wrong.
Now for the reality check, more than adequate testimony that the Met Office is a waste of space.
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Heh.
Seems like the Met Office has a terminal case of botchulism.
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Will there be criminal charges or just a slap on the wrists?
Is it me or is that truck plowing snow into the other lane of the road? LOL
Cant see a HUGE winter some a few days off, but can predict the climate 50 years from now. Yep im convinced.
Hope I’m first 🙂
If the Met were just any average worker who kept making mistakes, they wouldn’t have a job to go to come Monday morning, and so they shouldn’t!
anthony,
what do u make of the following bloggers’ graphs which took raw giss data and the adjusted giss data for these two cities? have these individual bloggers done something wrong?
Brisbane Australia – GISS data
Just out of interest I decided to plot the raw temperature data for my home city of Brisbane, Australia from the GISS (ie the raw GHCN data) against the homogenized or adjusted GISS GHCN data. The temperature sensor is located at the Brisbane Eagle Farm Airport which is now our busy main international airport. The data used is the series available from 1950 to 2008. I have aniumated the result to highlight the difference.
As you can see the raw data shows a downward trend of about -0.6 C per century. The unadjusted data however shows an opposite trend of +0.6 C per century. Intuitively as the airport grew from a quiet strip to a busy international jet airport one would think the more recent data would be adjusted downwards for the heat island effect. Instead we see that the data prior to 1978 is adjusted down and the data in recent times was adjusted up.
http://thedogatemydata.blogspot.com/2009/12/raw-v-adjusted-ghcn-data.html
Cincinnati Ohio – GISS data
It took a little bit for me grasp what the homogenization process did in my hometown’s case. The raw data shows the late 1800s through the first decade of the 20th century were relatively cool compared to 1918 (or so) on. The 1940s and 1950s were definitely a warm period, but then the temperatures declined during the 1960s, and begin a warming trend thereafter that once again starts declining in the early 2000s.
The bottom line? The raw temperature based data definitely shows that the 1940s and 1950s were warmer than the post 1980 period, which of course doesn’t fit with the AGW theory at all!
http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:8ZaNhL-P3r0J:thevirtuousrepublic.com/2009/12/09/looking-for-global-warming-in-cincinnati/+dogatemydata+brisbane&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
“Forecasters conceded that they did not spot the widespread snow storms …until it was too late.”
Satellites, radar, new super computer. Were they using tea leaves and a crystal ball instead of modern technology? Do snow storms form that quickly? Being in central Texas I know a thunderstorm can form quickly but I’m not as familiar with snow. But that may be changing.
After two enjoyable hours reading WUWT plus links, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with the issue is by laughing!
A high profile satirist/standup comedian needs to take the arguments on board. Most of the populist comedians are vrey well educated and clever and reach an audience that scientists can never match.
Come on ,you guys, there’s an audience primed and ready.
You have got to be kidding!!!
After all the bad winter weather the Brits have had to endure to date, their ‘experts’ blow it again??!!! Come on, they can’t blame it on a long-range seasonal forecast gone bad.
Maybe it would help if they quit worrying about the climate and used only meteorologists to study weather patterns so they could learn to see the forest for the trees.
Leave the climate fantasies to CRU.
Word is there will be a thaw this weekend followed by another cold blast.
Where is all that January heat wave (NASA is detecting) going?
Time to take away their computers and give them a weather rock.
http://www.usscouts.org/profbvr/weather_rock/
Couldn’t they look out the window?
“flaws in the Met Office’s bad weather warning system”
=====
meaning the weather warning system is bad ??
meaning bad weather is flawed ??
meaning weather bad warning ??
meaning system warning bad weather??
meaning every man for themselves?? that i understand, chicago after a 10″ snowfall 🙂
I’ve had a weather rock for many years. It does a fantastic job. Much better, apparently, than the MET. I like the fact that it produces the rain shadow effect.
And ‘they’ say it’s the hottest January on the ‘records’!
Err they spent 30 million pounds on a machine that can only do 1000 billion calculations a second!???? [snip]
You can get that kind of processing power for maybe 100k these days. Even if you don’t take advantages of some multiple dispatch calculations, you still can build that big of a machine under 1 million.
One huge what a stupid waste of money moment. How do they spend that money!? Is there any thinking going on?
It almost seems like these people are so invested in the AGW narrative that they are incapable of objectively predicting severe cold weather events.
God help us.
Climatology is the only profession where you get paid to be wrong all the time. What a disgrace.
They need more funding. What’s the bet Brown will promise more money?
Dr.T G Watkins(Wales) (18:32:24) : I agree whole heartedly. Been saying we need a comic look at all this. Late show hosts and stand up comics seem to hit a (subconscious) nerve with the general public. We need another George Carlin
How to hide the Sun: click
Time to take away their computers and give them a weather rock.
I’ll second that 🙂
The elephant in the roadway is this: Now, somehow, the government has assumed responsibility for the weather; after all, they are demanding personal sacrifices to keep the planet cold, rather than warm.
The people, obviously, prefer warm to cold. Thus weather has become political, even though control of it is beyond the power of politicians (but don’t let them hear that)
The weather Almanac predicted the cold snap in the US midwest, but NOAA could only imagine warmth.
They did forecast it,but just not in time.
I told ’em when they were sold that fancy computer by that spotty-faced salesman,they should have gone for quad-cores with serious graphics cards,but no,they had to spend most of the budget on the software package,”Fudgedata 3.5″ and “E-mail Vault”(beta!).
The USHCN already has such devices at at least two stations:
Weather Rope:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=35952
Weather Rock:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=35739