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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James Bull says:
May 1, 2012 at 6:32 am
> My wife and I went to a friends wedding in Belfast many years ago, our friend was a met officer working at an RAF station in Scotland and marring a local girl.
Really? I hadn’t realized that was still legal. 🙂
With all due respect, the story does say in regard to ‘storage reservoirs’ the following:
And since the ‘storage’ aspect has been addressed, we can address treatment as cited by Andy who writes:
Don’t know about the ‘filtration’/treatment plant specifically, but conjecturing now if those facilities were on the order of +sixty years old they may not have been economical to repair, the supply and return ‘mains’ running to and from may have required inordinate repair and maintenance (leaks, ruptures etc.) and the treatment functions taken up by new facilities now in operation and on line …
It would be nice if an informed opinion or two would comment on the actual upgrades that have been made to various water supply systems.
.
Computer models. ’nuff said.
Thames Water is the company that supplies London and the South East. They have sold off 23 reservoirs as building sites over the past 20 years. In the meantime demand has grown greatly as population has risen, fuelled by opening the gates wide to the whole of eastern Europe. So Thames Water do very little to actually collect water when it rains but have made a lot of money which goes to their senior executives as ‘bonuses’. They seem to have forgotten that their purpose in life is to supply water and they should be building reservoirs, desalination plants and also fixing leaks as they lose more from leaky pipes than they supply to people. But it doesn’t seem to matter as the government run Environment Agency does all the PR work for TW and tells everyone that although it has been raining hard for about 3 weeks now and we have flooding all over the place we must not expect the drought to be over before Christmas at the earliest. I visited East Devon last week which is in ‘severe drought’ the River Axe has flooded acres of farmland near Colyton and the same with the River Otter near Honiton. This country is gripped by madness.
Best summary of this issue in one picture, evah:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/01/quite-possibly-the-funniest-weatherclimate-photo-evah/
So, the alarmists were right after all? It’s droughtflood … soon to be followed by warmcold and cloudshine.
And it was all started by manbearpig.
“a loot of time on your hands” Was that a Freudian slip? Pretty accurate. 400 scientists and all the computing power you can want …… What excuse will they have now?
Oh Dr Corbyn! We have a job for you and you have your choice of any of these 400 recently vacanted offices to choose from.
And in the year 2014 the IPCC’s skynet system became self aware! Feed the budget beast for now and ask questions later.
“Making predictions for the UK more than a couple of weeks in advance is pretty much impossible”
So why they do impossible things and present them as non impossible?
“Does the Beeb think we’re all stupid”
heh. yes. got any evidence to contradict them?
‘they are my version of the clowns and the circus’ so glad you find it so amusing. john wayne gacey was another terrific clown you might equally enjoy.
I’m scared.
Re-read that forecast again. First: “…slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months…”
If the wettest April in 100 years was predicted as the DRIEST of the three months, then watch out for May and June.
You thought that Kiribati was going to disappear?
Wait until the British Isles goes under…
I prefer “BSIBSO.”
Frank Luxem says:
May 1, 2012 at 8:10 am
During my visit to Great Britain in June of 1997 it was termed the hottest, driest June in history. When I was there in the second half of the month it was the coldest, wettest June in history. And it was the same month. British weather is always volatile, and that has nothing to do with AGW.
The first half of June 1997 was no where near as warm as 1976 and the month was nowhere near the coldest. You must have been watching the Met Office weather program on the BBC.
This sums it up,
“Drought” /drowt/ n. the continuous absence of rain; dry weather. [Old English} – droughty adj.
– source Oxford English Dictionary.
Drought and the shortage of water have two different meanings with various causes in case of the latter.
The wettest place on Earth could have a shortage of water if it had to keep alive all the humans on the planet. Still doesn’t mean that there is a drought and yet heard this word mentioned numerous times over in the UK after and during flooding.
There is a town south of Calgary, Alberta called “High River”. People there were surprised when the river over flowed its banks and flooded the town in spring. Can’t make this stuff up.
According to provisional figures for the Central England Temperature (CET), April is likely to be more than 1 degree C colder than March. Since the series began 350 years ago, April has been colder than March 13 times, but only twice has it been more than 1 degree C colder. These were in 1780 (1.6 degrees), and 1938 (1.5).
There are many planning considerations which make it difficult to build reservoirs in the UK. (Not In My backyard)
The UK has indeed has many dry winters and this means that all the spring summer rain just runs off and rivers flood. Most water in the South East is pumped from deep aquifers. This rain still leaves a water shortage.
The Met office forecast though is still a joke.
My April forecast, based partly on an astronomical analogue year, indicated below normal temperatures for the period overall. Detail gave slight warming from the 6th and 10th (it was warmer from the 11th), and a cooler wetter week or so from the 18/19th, which is exactly when we had most of the rain. It concluded with warming from the 26th, and in the high teens °C in the S.E. by the end of the month. That was based purely on heliocentric angular calculations, and could be done one or ten years out, it makes no difference.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
The Beeb & Met Office apply Hunpty’s rule at all times.
“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
I’m with Alice on this one. Clearly our national institutions and politicians, including the aforementioned BBC and Met Office, the Royal Society, The RSPB (wind turbines don’t kill birds), Chris Huhne (Energy and Climate Change minister) who thinks nuclear power is “unproven technology”, and fracking is “untried technology”, PM David Cameron (who doesn’t think), deputy PM Nick “I’m still a Liberal at heart” Clegg (where’s Clegg?) all expect us to be like the White Queen, and believe even more “impossible things” before, during, and after breakfast.
“Alice in Wonderland” was written in England, and all UK citizens are living it right now. Rebekah Brooks is clearly the Red Queen (Through the Looking Glass), and James & Rupert Murdoch are Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but who’s the “Mad Hatter” in your opinion?
The Mad Hatter? It’s got to be Gordon Brown
_Jim says, May 1, 2012 at 11:01 am
So you’re willing to take that at face value then Jim?
Really, how does a revised distribution network increase storage?
http://www.abingdonreservoir.org.uk/latestnews.html
You can read more here:
http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/600m_gallons_reservoirs_closed.aspx
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/5392.htm
In the latter case start with the Main Report; the one that now has highlighter all over it. See how many times you can count words like Carbon, Climate Change, Sustainability, Habitat, etc. Interim shortfall due to advance asset conversion doesn’t get much mention unfortunately. I wonder if that’ll be in the next plan due in 2014?
Haven’t they learned yet that since weather always averages over time… when a season is dry expect a raiiny season soon, when deluged for a month expect a soon drought.
Oh… I forgot… the MET’s billion$ super-computer is incapable of computing in reverse!
It means overall that the Met office didn’t account as to where the April rain would come from, rather than where they though it would not, ie; the westerlies, which have all but gone. That is also why it has been so cold out of the sun. In N.Ireland there has been little rain, clear or cloudy skies, but little rain. Simple answer, though controversial, is that the gulf stream and upwards has been severly affected, the Met may know this, they will certainly be thinking about the westerlies but they never mention it or the gulf stream, to the unwashed. May and June are the ones to watch for, temperature wise.
Ha! The UK Met Office’s forecast has, so far, fitted NZ’s weather a lot better and we’re on the other side of the globe from them! We’ve had a beautiful indian summer with more than sufficient rain between the anticyclones to prevent drought. It’s now May and although temperatures have now dropped, it’s a still, cloudless day again and this could last for another 3-4 days more.
Given the UK MetOffice’s penchant for sharp, accurate predictions over the last four years, I think I still prefer NZ’s MetService forecasts—for New Zealand of course—their record is quite superior—maybe because our guys look out the window more often, because our supercomputer is much smaller than the MetOffice’s supercomputer ….
Surely! But,What should happen after next April?
Sue Smith says:
May 1, 2012 at 5:31 am
Average Winter Rainfall 1960 – 1989 for South East England is 190 mm (or so my Excel spreadsheet says)
Rainfall for Winter 2011 was 185.5 mm
Rainfall for Winter 2012 was 160.8 mm
So it was not really “very dry” for the past 2 winters. I make it about 8% less rainfall than average.
Source http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
Is that ALL? Here in Portland (Oregon) that would be called a drought! (at least for the winter time-summer we can go over a month without rain and not call it a drought) It is not unusual at all for us to get that much in the month of December alone (more than normal and we’d grumble about it but not that unusual). I thought that England was a whole lot wetter than the Beaver State.