Gordon Fulks writes in about this humorous headline showing how the media catastrophises even simple things like a pleasant weekend forecast:
Hello Everyone:
Just to provide a little balance to the story about snow and cold in the Pacific Northwest that I just sent around, here is a weather story out of Britain:
Source:http://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-hot-sahara-weekend-111451996.html
One comment rewrote this headline as:
‘Sahara to be as cold as the UK this weekend’
20 degrees C is 68 degrees F.
WOW, it is spring somewhere! That’s good news.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD
The part I liked was:
So the record is from over a half century ago and is five degrees higher … color me unimpressed.
w.
They just as well have written “as hot as Norway” in the headline. Even in Norway it reached 20C Thursday (22 March). The highest reading was 20.2C, and never ever has 20C been measured in Norway in March. The previous record for 22 March anywhere in the country was 16.0C set in 1946. The previous earliest date for 20C anywhere was 3 April.
This is a classic BBC/met off ruse. They do it all the time. This place is hotter than the Sth of France or Sth Spain or the namib dessert. Just ridiculous.
It’s even more hilarious when you know that the blocking high will be to the east of the uk and therefore will bring easterly winds on-shore where the sea temp is 6°C. Can’t say I fancy sunbathing at that temp.
It must take these clown hours of searching to find somewhere cooler than London.
Ric Werme @ur momisugly 5.21pm /Brian H @ur momisugly 5.49pm
Many thanks both, for your comments – most useful!
This is a report by Louise Gray which I read with disbelief. At the bottom of the column is a direct to the back page weather maps which clearly show the Sahara as hotter than the UK by 10+C. I did email the Editor asking where this girl got her misinformation but got no reply. Never mind Louise has a history of baseless alarmist reports so nothing new there. The Telegraph is getting as bad as the NY Times.
The Sahara is not all that far from the South of England, a good dust storm down there and I have to clean my car. I don’t know how far it carries inland, if you walk due south from my house you can make a good few hundred yards before dying when you reach the shoreline. I call it the “white cliff effect”.
The high yesterday was 80F here in the central Appalachians & I can attest, it was wonderful. I can finally get rid of the double shirts & socks, the long underwear, and open the windows up.
Most yrs, even after warm spells, there’ll be some snow here last of March/first of April. When I was down in VA, there was 8″ wet snow around April 7th 1987, and a whopping 30+” in extreme SW Virginia.
Verity Jones says:
March 23, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Better enjoy it while you can folks – this weekend in the UK might be our summer. If the Met Office forecasts another BBQ summer and it runs to recent form then all we can expect is rain.
On the other hand, by the law of averages, we’re due a better summer.
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I missed summer in the UK last year, I was in the shower.
“20 degrees C is 68 degrees F.”
And 72 degrees F is “room temperature”. Brrrrrr…
I have noticed thou; the British sun (no not the newspaper) has been out shining on all those warm days. The washing is doing nicely out there on the line and the temperature – in the sun – is 23 deg. C exactly.
I’m from South Florida. 68F is cool. 98F is hot.
We did hit 32F in 2010, twice. Killed the majority of Iguanas,( they’re alien anyway). My baby coconut palms froze. I was worried. They’ve recovered though, thankfully.
2010 was the first hard freeze here since 1988. Before that about 1977.
We were 69F here this morning. It was so balmy, I wore a sweater.
fine. Average sahara temperatures are 30C, and some months 40C upwards
However, the current temperature in Marrakesh is 29C
My dear Mother, A Liverpudlian, used to say as a child “It’s too hot to eat!”. When I heard this as a child, I asked her: How hot was it? Upper 70s (only Fahrenheit back then). I thought, how ridiculous, That’s not hot.
I was less than 10 y.o.
20 degrees! – ooh time to roll me trousers up and put a knotted handkerchief on me head and paddle my toes in the North Sea.
Headline in the Sun – accompanied by scantily clad lady in bikini – phew what a scorcher!
It wouldn’t be Britain if it made sense to the rest of the world!
The British have been talking about the weather since the Medieval period – “it was warmer back then you know”. Climate change is just something to blame for the stuff ups – like the wrong kind of snow. Sooner or later they’ll just go back to talking about the weather.
Its GLOBAL WARMING, I tell you…. Oh, yes it is, don’t argue…. Warmest March since – like – EVAH (well, ‘since records began’, in about 1985)….
(Pilot light keeps going out on my pool heater – s*d it – wanted to get in there this weekend..!)
I forgot the video for the “general” forecast. 🙂
The Fast Show – Scorchio!!!
I like the story. Maybe more people will come to realize that temperature is not the entirety of “climate.” You would hardly say that the UK has a climate comparable to the Sahara.
Speaking as one who has lived in the Sahara, 68 degrees is cold, winter jacket time. People adapt to thier climate.
Well, considering the article was for a United Kingdom audience, it makes sense that they would compare the weather there to somewhere else. If the article was for a Saharan desert audience, then maybe the other comparison would make sense.
michael hart says:
March 24, 2012 at 6:25 am
“I forgot the video for the “general” forecast. 🙂
The Fast Show – Scorchio!!!”
SPECIALE REPORT: Nimbo Cumulos
John Marshall says:
March 24, 2012 at 3:17 am
I cancelled my subscription to the Daily Telegraph months ago having bought it every day since 1956.
Up until recently it could be relied upon for trustworthy unbiased reportage by educated news staff, but now the brainwashed insipid generation of reporters, ungrounded in their speciality and seemingly devoid of general knowledge to use as checks and balances to their stories, have reached the middle management levels, the paper is not worth diddly squat.
How very, very sad.
Here are some airfield temps in England recorded at 15:00.
Nottingham Watnall 14c
East Midlands 14c
Cosford RAF 18c
Yeovilton 19c
Plymouth 18c
Bournmouth airport 17c
So, no 21c then?
update.
17.40
Current temperature London 61F
Current temperature Marrakesh 71.6F
tomorrow this region of the sahara will see 86F.
Lets wait and see what the temperature at Northolt, uk shall be