UPDATE: Forecast humor on steroids, here
You can’t make up FAIL like this. First this story in the BBC Today:
Now let’s have a look at the official Met Office forecast for April, issued on March 23rd, 2012:
Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: April – June 2012 Issue date: 23.03.12
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period. The probability that UK precipitation for April-May-June will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25% whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 10-15% (the 197-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
CONTEXT:
As a legacy of dry weather over many months water resources in much
of southern, eastern and central England remain at very low levels.
Winter rainfall in these areas has typically been about 70% of average,
whilst observations and current forecasts suggest that the final totals for
March will be below average here too. The Environment Agency advises
that, given the current state of soils and groundwater levels in these
areas, drought impacts in the coming months are virtually inevitable.
Read the entire forecast here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
Saved copy here: Met_Office_A3-layout-precip-AMJ
Obviously, the power sucking supercomputer they recently put online needs to be bigger.
It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
GIGO me thinks. This isn’t the first time this has happened:
Met Office admits they botched snow warning
And then there’s the BBQ summer fiasco, which prompted replacement of the seasonal forecasts with the shorter term one you see above:
Met Office ends season forecasts – no more “BBQ summers”
Maybe they should stick to DART (Digital Advanced Reckoning Technology) which can do the job of making forecasts equally well, using less power, less space, and less money: 
h/t to Charles the Moderator and Adrian Kerton over at CA in comments.
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I too heard the basking shark story – the scientist present did at least counter the suggestion of the sharks being drawn in earlier – simply not true and more likely we are just noticing more. The epic fail of assuming global warming = always warmer = don’t need to look at real world to know what is happening outside always makes me laugh…
Instead of buying a new supercomputer, they should delete their current weather- and climate model and use the available money to start building a new model from scratch.
On the other hand: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” (Napoleon)
And this is very applicable for the Met Office:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Mark Twain)
It’s been a real North/South divide, southern & eastern England’s had little rain (until April!) for the last 18 months, 17″ down on the average, IIRC. We’ve lacked winter rainfall, so the ground water hasn’t recharged properly. What’s falling now, is absorbed by vegetation or is just running off the sodden upper layers of ground.
My in-laws, near Blackpool, have had nothing but rain for months. The reservoirs in the Pennines & northwards, are full to overflowing, but rather than building a national water grid, we’ve got plans for £36 billion, to be spent on a railway line from London to Birmingham, to save commuters 20 minutes!
Drought, temperatures to match the Sahara – you just knew what was coming next!
Anyway, braving the sandstorms and general grimness of it all Richard North has been out and about delivering aid to the worst affected areas
(more here and here)
Based on historic fact, if you want rain in the UK the just get some dumb stupid official to declare a Drought. In 1976 a Minister of Drought was appointed, it only took a few weeks for him to be declared the Minister of Floods. Strangely for all the money flooding into the MET Office they forget about the past, reading a few old newspapers would not go amiss.
See the BBC take on it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17897982
No criticism of the Met Office there. I wonder why.
So what. Even in April, there was the threat of water rationing looming; they were contemplating shutting down the fountain at Trafalgar Square (didn’t follow up whether they actually did in the end).
A few years ago, London, i.e. the south, was so dry, Hyde Park looked like the Sahara, while at the same time, the north of England was flooded. Did it occur to you that “drought impacts” can be regional and don’t have to be nation-wide? You know, it is some 1500Km from the south to Scottland – why wouldn’t there be a drought in some places but not in others?
Unlike 1976 all we need is a Met Office forecast not a “Minister of Drought” (Denis Howell) to ensure floods across the country within a few days! I think Dennis was more effective than the MO though!
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/philip-eden/The-greatest-drought-on-record.htm
I covered this last week. The reservoirs are full !
http://blackswhitewash.com/2012/04/26/bbc-props-up-the-orrible-drought-fantasy/
Yep. Only in the UK can we have a hosepipe ban and flood warning s in the same places at the same time.
What you must realise is that Climate change became the UK’s new State religion to replace the Church of England. In political terms it has been the final stage of post-Imperial fascism, the transformation of the allegiance of the elite from the Empire to its replacement, subservience to international Marxism.
The same has been happening in the USA and Australia, though not in Canada, so there’s something underlying it in common. It is the replacement of the WASPs the Masonic group who controlled the Empire for good, with Marxists, some like Obama apparently being of the very deep penetration variety.
And this new religion has to have at its core the illusion at least of being able to predict the future. Otherwise how would its leaders be considered omnipotent? So the European Marxists, some called Fabians, set up the replacement for freemasonry, which is Common Purpose, and used the fake IPCC science as part of its indoctrination. Obama’s probably CP.
Starting with Ken Lay, the money men bought into this with carbon trading. And as the UK has since the 17th Century been the centre of World banking, it was intended to be the centre for carbon trading to underpin the new World currency which was to be the Euro and Amero. Remember that Blood [ex GS] and Gore settled into London for their ‘$billion-earning’ business.
Thus it is that the Met. Office has set out to invest in its version of ‘Deep Thought’ [Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy], having been conned by Hansenkoism. But they did not realise that they had been misled by scientific shysters. The IPCC climate models can’t predict climate. Indeed, the warming bias caused by the greatly exaggerated [at least a factor of 10] CO2-AGW means the models have learnt heuristically to predict the atmospheric conditions of another planet than ours, one in which the laws of physics are very different.
There may be such a planet in a parallel universe: it’s certainly not ours.
“… and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.”
That’s about a kilowatt per home.
Microwave oven -1200 watts, steam iron -1100 watts, space heater -1500 watts, oven -2500+ watts, range – 1500 to 3500 per burner, central air – 3500 watts, electric clothes dryer – 4000 watts.
Maybe homes in Romania.
This has been a cold wet April in the UK. But the water shortage in Southern England and some of East England and the Midlands is real. The rest of the UK is just fine. The water shortage stems from two dryer than usual Winters and the unprecedented immigration permitted over the past few years which has raised demand, especially in the South. This latter reason is a political question that has no place on this blog suffice to say that the water shortage has arisen not so much through ‘climate’ as through political bumbling.
What the BBC, MET and Environment Agency are parrotting is that the ground is so so dry that it will take years to get wet?
That explains why the Badminton Horse Trials were cancelled due waterlogged ground. Train journeys in drought areas delayed due to flooding.
What did those two guys in the gallery of the Muppet Show say?
Get the bums outta here. 🙂
I hope I’ll be able to compare here the forecasts of Piers Corbyn and any other “cyclomanics” who by Leif’s standards AFAICT should fare no better than the Met. on average. Should be interesting to see, and worthwhile for the sake of science, because it’s simply evidence, whether or no they are better.
I remind you that our friend Mr Hansen was in Edinburgh at the start of April to pick up some gong or other. It snowed. Since then it has been unseasonably (even for us) cold and wet. Is there some sort of enhanced Gore / Flannery effect we need to divert some research dollars to investigating?
Solution for the MET office:
Oak before the Ash in for a splash
Ash before the Oak in for a soak.
“Back to basic for these nincompoops, no supercomputers just an abacus to keep them busy.”
..hanging from a mobile above their cribs. No touch honey.. BAD for you! I know Piers Corbyn is violently shaking his head at their predictions, in danger of whiplash..
The day before it started raining, there was an extension of those areas considered to be in drought, to encompass much of the Midlands and south-west. Newspapers were running stories saying it was now a worse drought than 1976, and predicting that our hosepipe ban will remain in force at least until next year.
I took the dog for a walk on Sunday, and after having to turn round when one of our normal footpaths was underwater (next to but usually 2-3ft above the small river), I walked back round what is usually a field but which had water coming up to the (boxer) dog’s knees and over the top of my boots. I wasn’t technically in the river, but I wouldn’t have been getting any wetter had I been.
Yesterday’s weather was OK until the evening, and then we’ve had heavy rain all night forecast to ease in a couple of hours and then a decent afternoon. Rest of the week is forecast to be a mix of sunshine and showers with one day of more persistent rain. And then we have a Bank Holiday weekend…
As others have said, it’s the wettest drought ever.
Those metrological folk and their lying machines
The tempreture goes Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
And never Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
They enchant Poloticians and steal all the scenes
With their temperatures Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And never Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
Up! never Down! lying around.
Bluffing the bluff and defying the crowd.
They’re all, frightfully mean
Those metrological folk and their lying machines
There’s an ancient country saying :
On hearing the first cuckoo
And seeing the first swallow
Hosepipe ban sure to follow.
Sitting in my garden in Austria. Bank Holiday and thanks to a strip of high pressure, it’s 30deg here !
The April rain and cold in the UK was a recoil effect from the March incident solar flares. The UK was dry warm and sunny in March due to the flares. Perhaps that’s why the Met office is so useless, because it ignores the major influence of the variabilty of the sun.
Do you suppose that this will count as an ‘extreme weather event’ and therefore further evidence of dangerous man-made global climate change?
Will we be told that it’s happening because the planet’s warming and there’s more water in the air? Or is it just the English weather, unpredictable as always?
Many times watching the Met Office weather forecast on tv they actually don’t get right the current weather situation for where I live. So if they don’t what’s happening now how the heck can they tell us what is going to happen in the future!
No wonder the Met Office got out of public, long-range seasonal forecasting.
It makes me think about the Australian projection for ‘perpetual drought’ when state governments listened to these climate fools and spent billions planning and building desalination plants then the Biblical floods came. They are learning about climate change – because that’s what it does but just doesn’t follow their agenda. See also “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”