I’ve been given a link in email today to a public forecast page for July by weather prognosticator Piers Corbyn, which you can investigate in full yourself here. I find his web pages and forecasts hard to read, and even harder to accept any more, because in my opinion, he presents them like a carnival barker with overuse of exclamation points, bright colors, over bolded texts, random font changes, and fantastic claims. It tends to set off my BS meter like some tabloid newspapers do. Here’s his USA forecast for July:
[UPDATE: 7/8/12 – The full USA forecast has been made available by Mr. Corbyn and is available here for your inspection: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/usa-1207-july-inc-public-summary-news-page-full-fc-key-usa-maps-and-extremes-slat8a-prod-29jun.pdf ]
Some people say however, that despite all that unnecessary gaudiness, he makes accurate predictions. Because he’s made a public forecast and advertised its availability, urging “people to pass the links on”, here’s a chance to find out if he demonstrates the skill that is claimed.
He made this bold claim yesterday:
“Terrible weather is coming the world over this July so WeatherAction has issued free summary long range forecasts for USA and for Europe…”
He sounds like Joe Romm or Bill McKibben talking about “climate disruption”. Of course, it could just be another July in the northern hemisphere. Here’s the rest:
The USA pdf link is issued today on July 4th to go with the Europe link issued the day before. We urge people to pass the links on.
“We also expect very serious near simultaneous solar-activity driven deluges and stormy conditions around the world during our top Red Warning R5 and R4 periods. Any communication of the forecasts must acknowledge WeatherAction”
– Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters
WeatherAction Free Summary Forecast for July USA:-
“Could it get worse? Yes!” – Extreme thunderstorms, giant hail and ‘out-of control’ forest fires’
pdf link = http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No32.pdf
(or no links twitpic = http://twitpic.com/a3y28b/full )
WeatherAction PUBLIC warning Europe July 2012 “Off-the-scale” Flood & Fire extremes likely (WA12No31)
pdf link = http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No31.pdf
(or no links twitpic = http://twitpic.com/a3p7pm/full )
The USA forecast map he provides is a bit hard to read, since it seems he scanned it in from print…note the dot patterns in the graphics. I present it here from his PDF page.
Here’s his forecast page for Europe:
He lists “off scale” weather in NW Europe is one of the claims. I wonder how one should define “off scale” weather.
As Carl Sagan once said:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
So now that Mr. Corbyn has put forth some extraordinary claims, we can catalog here the evidence to support those claims, and revisit the results at the end of the month. I urge readers to continue to post both pro and con evidence here as the month progresses. I’ll put a link to this thread in the WUWT sidebar so readers can add information that might be relevant.
Since Corbyn is a fellow climate skeptic, let’s give him a fair but factual evaluation to find out if these claims hold up, of if he’s simply following the path of some prognosticators of the past, such as Jeane Dixon, who made claims so broad that even a small kernel of happenstance occurrences after the fact were used to justify confirmation of the prediction. According to the Wikipedia page on Dixon:
John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term “the Jeane Dixon effect,” which refers to a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions.
I don’t know that is what is going on here with Corbyn or not, but since he’s put out an open 
forecast, let’s find out. Inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: here’s a video of Corbyn explaining his methods:
Saskia Steinhorst says:
July 13, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Saskia, the problem is that there is both good, solid information on the one hand, and absolute nonsense on the other hand, on Wikipedia.
Which is why you are foolish to trust it, unless you have the knowledge or the experience to tell the difference. I use Wikipedia, but I don’t trust it in the slightest. It is most valuable to me as a source of citations to further information.
In particular, it is useless for anything regarding which there is active passionate debate … which covers a lot of things that you wouldn’t think people would debate passionately, and some that you would, like climate. “Revert wars” are a daily occurrence in the pages that refer to the climate debate.
All the best,
w.
Well, for the record, and having strenuously pressed my case to make sure Willis looks at weatheraction reasonably, I do think he is correct regarding the typhoons in the period he looked at – unless someone from weatheraction or weathernet can explain it. It would have been nice if Piers had when he popped up, but he didn’t.
The one thing I would say, is that he didn’t predict 6 typhoons, many of the predictions were “1 or 2”. So it could be argued he leaves himself with wriggle room, but the timing and locations were accurate. One thing I don’t understand is that it seems that weathernet is only agreeing with weatheractions assessment of whether the event occurred or not. I am slightly confused by that…
That’s it? No investigation as to whether the “independent study” is valid? You definitely need to jack up your skepticism level, MBP.
Me, I’m not that foolish as to believe some random “study”. So I took a look to see what was happening. I picked a forecast at random, I looked at his forecast for W
ouch!! shoot the messenger by all means but make sure you miss your foot whilst doing it.
It is clear that there is more than one definition as the debate on this topic diversifies. You may have your preferred definition and others may choose theirs one does not make the other wrong. It is clear that there needs to be some form of standardization of categories of storms, however the point is the storms (tropical. hurricane, tornado or otherwise) are all events that diverge from normality, the occurrence of these may or may not be significant, but they did occur at or around the time predicted – perhaps it was this that the auditors acknowledged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon#Intensity_classifications
Are Japanese and Hong-Kong classifications different to NOAA’s classifications ?
We are well into the depths of semantics ”mine is bigger than yours attitude.”
Then you say this
”Meanwhile, my work has attracted close to a million page views per year for the last three years … and yours?”
You mean like a consensus sort of thing ? Is the consensus right this time ?
Willis, is it just a matter of scale?
The met office breaks the day into 8 periods, Piers breaks the month into 8 periods.
One cannot falsify the met office ‘system’ by saying it didn’t rain here between ten and one, as they forecast.
Sometimes they can forecast the weather here and sometimes they can’t: if it a large mass of rain heading my way, then they might get it right. On the other hand if the rainfall is in smaller parcels, it might rain 40 miles away but not here. If one is being charitable, one might say they aren’t too far wrong.
The methodology by which they judge their successes for rain:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/accuracy/forecasts
(i.e. it rained in about 60% per cent of the places we said it would) Even seems to be in line with the way Piers’ judges himself in his headline claims.
Man Bearpig says:
July 14, 2012 at 2:21 am
“It is clear that there needs to be some form of standardization of categories of storms”
Meteorologists have been using these for many years!
JMA uses the same criteria as NOAA for classification of a Typhoon – MSW of 64kts +
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm
“Russ says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Piers is a very busy man, not having hundreds of staff to do his bidding, and it does sound as though he caught up reading this thread today.
——————————————————–
From the time when I made the offer to bet him and when I said I gotten only “crickets”, Piers made no less than 5 posts responding to comments in this thread, including one that was responding directly to me … so no, your excuse won’t wash.”
Willis, I fear I see some rant and emotions instead of a discussion down to facts.
Maybe it is a preconceived opinion that some people have on Piers work on one or the other side.
I did not go into detail, as the weather generally is for me not so relevant, it is just weather – but as far as I understand Piers forecast is based on a combination of history and solar and moon position and solar activity combined with actual atmospheric/ocean situation.
It is a different approach to the standard meteorology approach which is based on models and actual atmospheric ocean status and does not give a damm on history and moon/solar status and solar activity. Please correct me if I am wrong.
So to my understanding the question is if based on solar activity and moon status + history we can get an understanding of the weather patterns? Such forecast, especially a long range forecast will have its different range of errors as well in time as in location as explained a couple of times in the blog by Russ and others to a short time forecast for tomorrow.
So when we put Piers forecast to the test I understand many would expect no emotional and dismissive approach, but a scientific approach, fair discussion, fair error range and maybe comments about the weather pattern that is developed. Did he recognise correctly the weather pattern or not?
Are there recognisable weather patterns that are linked to the solar activity and moon position? Did Piers find some correlation that helps to make a better forecast? I think this is what most of the people would be interested to understand from this test.
This are my 2 cents.
@Willis – Well, I also did say “Or maybe semi-intelligent for using a stepping-stone to extend my knowledge about subjects I never read up on?” meaning that I use info from Wiki as a starting point. As a former research journalist, I abide by the “religious practise” of checking sources and source materials 🙂
Maybe when people reach a certain level of expertise and experience within a specific field, the criteria by which “rights” and “wrongs” among competitors are scored at such fine points that it seems like nit-picking to “we the people”. Like, did it rain before or after 5PM? Was the hail the size of golf balls or pigeon eggs? Were there 6 typhoons or 2? In the latter case, I’m sure the people who were actually the victims of ANY of those typhoons didn’t give a hoot about how many there were. Naturally those that didn’t suffer the effects were pretty darn happy. But all were warned about the likelihood of such events.
What I’m saying is, even at the scientific level, everything depends on the person interpreting the facts. Take (stepping on slippery ice here) the bible for instance. How many interpretations are there? And doesn’t the one group claim they have The Truth, as opposed to the other group? In effect, however, the basic facts remain the same. As in predicting the weather. If 2 people predict that the month of July will be a wet one, it doesn’t really matter whether it rained 20 days or 25. Whether it started on July 3rd or July 7th. In the end, it matters that we were afloat much of the ,month. It becomes a different story when one person predicts loads of sunshine, and the other person predicts the rain.
I have seen two totally opposed interpretations of ice reduction/growth of the polar ice caps for exactly the same period. Both by “scientific” institutes. Excuse me if I have doubts even when scientists proclaim to “have the truth”. It all boils down to the eye of the beholder. On where the comma is placed. I’m sure that (for example) in the case of the sentences “We’re going to eat Grandma” and “We’re going to eat, Grandma”, the subject – being Grandma – is much happier with the 2nd variety. And in this case the use of a comma makes all the difference.
Am I making sense?
Agnostic says:
July 14, 2012 at 2:16 am
Thanks, Agnostic. When Piers forecast “1 or 2” typhoons I counted it as “one plus one”. By that method he forecast “seven plus two” typhoons. They agreed that one plus one of them didn’t happen, leaving six plus one that they say did happen. So yes, they did forecast six, plus one.
In the event, there were two real typhoons … plus zero. Like you, I was hoping Piers might explain that, and he still might do so. I’m a patient man. I just want to know the names of the six typhoons that he claims occurred, I won’t bug him about the “plus one”.
w.
Man Bearpig says:
July 14, 2012 at 2:21 am
Man Bearpig, I have grown weary of people finding some random “fact” and posting it to show that I’m wrong, without doing the slightest investigation to see if it is true. But you are right, I was overly harsh on you, my apologies.
That is absolute nonsense and total hogwash. The category of storms variously named (depending on location) as a hurricane, a cyclone, or a typhoon, is very clearly defined, and has been for decades. It is the same as “Force 12” on the Beaufort scale, which has been around since 1805. To be named a hurricane/cyclone/typhoon, a storm has to have sustained winds that are over 64 knots (force 12).
Period.
Your hand-waving claim that “there is more than one definition” is totally incorrect. Piers, as a weatherman, is well aware of the definition. He is aware that there are only a certain number of typhoons per year. When he forecasts a typhoon, he is not forecasting a tropical depression—there are many more of them than typhoons.
And if the auditors counted tropical depressions as typhoons, then shame on them.
w.
Man Bearpig says:
July 14, 2012 at 3:01 am
Did you read your own citation? It says:
And no, this is not semantics of any kind. The definition is crystal clear. Sustained winds over 64 knots means it is a typhoon.
Sheesh …
Oh, please. I am saying that despite his claim that I should write a different way, that my writing is very popular the way it is. If you can’t tell the difference between a question of the popularity of a writing style, and a claimed scientific consensus, go back to school.
w.
Chas says:
July 14, 2012 at 4:12 am
No, that’s not how Piers judges himself. Take the current example being discussed. Piers forecast 6 typhoons (plus perhaps one more) in July of 2008. There were two. Not six. Two.
Despite that, Piers claimed this as a resounding success of his method. So no, it’s not a matter of scale, it’s a matter of exaggerated claims of success.
w.
Could I recommend a read of this. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/its-not-about-me/
Willis certainly puts his heart, and brain I think, on his sleeve to help us understand the person behind the typeset. You have my respect Willis for being such a powerful debater, but the fact that you are self-taught doesn’t belittle you in any way shape or form in my rule book. I find some of the most beligerant and blinkered views from peer acclaimed experts, who have more letters after their name than I have in my home address. I think you deserve even more respect for learning all that you have without the use of university facilities.
Willis..
“There is an important saying that Zen is not the moon, it is just the finger pointing at the moon. Complaints, arguments, and discussions about the finger miss the point – the subject of importance, the subject worthy of discussion, is the moon.”
So if we take the moon as representing (the weather), we have a finger pointing at it (the wind), we have rockets landing on it (the typhoon), we have meteorites striking it (lightning), and it has large temperature gradients (heat-wave & snow). We shouldn’t get too hung up on descriptions of the different parts explaining the moon, otherwise we may lose our ability to remember what the moon actually is.
For instance. A typhoon covers a very large area; there is no such thing as a baby typhoon remember. It has high wind speeds, but so does a tropical cyclone. In fact the difference between them is not 19mph but zero mph. Only the difference between the maximum wind speeds is 19mph. So we can imagine setting up 1000 buoys with accurate wind-gauges fitted, and equidistant from one another. What are the chances of more than 50% of the buoys recording a higher wind speed then 74mph as the tropical storm passes by?
I would say that a calculation is impossible because the storm is not linear and is constantly changing even on the small scale. It’s not a great analogy because the swell of the ocean would change the height of the buoys constantly so the readings would then have to be averaged.
Oh buoy!(sic) Not the dreaded mean average! In the same way a mean average is of no use in describing a monthly temperature trend, it is of little use in measuring oceanic wind speeds either. A month could have 25 days of cool abnormal weather, but if the last 5 days are exceptionally warm then the mean average will show that the month had an above average temperature trend. This doesn’t explain why our spring crops were detroyed by frost when we get back from holiday, in fact it just confuses the hell out of us because the average temperature makes it seem as though the month had mild and stable weather. Even using modern satellites to measure storm wind speeds, there will be innaccuracies, anomalies like radar doppler reflections and so the measurments must be averaged to get a result. The Met Office has a basic description of rain radar technique for anyone wanting to brush up on how it works.
So my next question for you Willis is this. Can you say with any certainty that no part of any of those tropical storms in question reached higher wind speeds than 74mph?
The weather is such a complex and chaotic system when it blows a storm that I believe a 100% accurate description using just two definitions is impossible. A certain amount of averaging has to be used.
It’s like the single snowflake crossover point at the UKs Met Office which states that, ‘if a single snowflake is observed to have settled on the roof of the Met Office building on the 25th of December, then it will be deemed to have snowed on Christmas Day’.
Yet no one in their right mind would count that one flake as being snowfall in the usual sense
(one swallow does not make a summer?).
I’m not trying to help Piers worm his way out of getting something wrong. I’m not making excuses for him. I’m trying to find clearer definitions to describe certain aspects of the weather without having to resort to finite mathematical points. The winds only had to rise to 75mph and be recorded as such for the storm to technically be classified as a typhoon. Any margin of error in the satellite data would absorb this. So the max speed would probably have to hit 76mph or higher to be absolutely sure of a more accurate result.
So Piers may well have gotten 3 or 4 or even 5 correct. Only if there was a fairly hefty margin of error would I admit he got a wrong call. Because with the weather, guarantees are hard to come by.
Using the same logic, if the NE USA Derecho didn’t happen and there were a few small thunderstorms, some hail and one flood, then I would put that down as a complete fail, but where the weather is concerned, to get the main aspects correct, storm, thunder, hail, but miss a couple of variables tornado, floods, I think that level of accuracy is something which most weather agencies would be proud of.
If the Met Office said that a storm would hit NE USA on the 29th bringing possible tornados, floods, thunder and large hail, but the tornados and floods didn’t happen, then they would be jumping up and down celebrating a huge success. I know that from a scientists point of view they were only 60% right but nobody could call that an outright fail. Neither would anyone call them on the size of the hail they predicted if it had dented their car.
If Piers forecast is going to be scrutinised for every single point which could be construed as an error, then I believe his entire forecast is going to end up being called a failure.
The science of weather is the finger, the rocket, the meteorite, the temperature gradient, but the weather itself is the moon. (no cheese involved!)
Don’t let the science blind you to the efficacy of the descriptors which Piers uses in his predictions. Weather is not a black & white science, well not yet anyway.
Kind regards
Russ
Lars P. says:
July 14, 2012 at 4:31 am
Lars, the facts are these. Piers forecast “swarms of tornados” and “giant hail” and “extreme thunder” (whatever that is) for July 1-4 south of the Great Lakes. None of that happened.
Piers forecast 6 typhoons (with perhaps one more) in July 2008. There were exactly two … and despite that Piers claimed his prediction was a resounding success.
Now, if you have some comments on those facts, bring them on. Am I passionate and emotional? Sure, it’s the nature of the beast. But that doesn’t change the facts, and I have presented a whole heap of those.
I do find it interesting that despite you saying that what are important are the facts, you don’t mention a single fact about Piers’s forecasts in your comment …
w.
Saskia Steinhorst says:
July 14, 2012 at 6:57 am
So your position is that the people were warned? Warned by what? There are typhoons every year, so for someone to say “there will be typhoons this year” is not a warning of any sort.
And for Piers to say there will be seven typhoons in July, plus maybe one or two more, when in fact there turned out to be only two? By your lights, that’s all to the good? He’s giving them a warning, so they should be grateful?
You sure you understand how this “science” thing works, Saskia? Someone makes a falsifiable prediction. If it comes true, their theory is supported. If it doesn’t come true, it counts against their theory.
But in no case do scientists say gosh, thanks for warning of things that didn’t happen, thank goodness that at least people were warned that there might actually be typhoons.
Nor is this “nitpicking” or “fine points”. If the Met Service says the weather will be beautiful for your friends’ weekend outdoor wedding, and it pours down rain all weekend, you’re not going to say “well, the weather was clear and fine on Monday, the Met Service were close, we should give them credit for being close, don’t want to be nit-picking about the exact day, we don’t want to focus on the fine points” …
w.
I’d like to add, the area of science behind your most successful debates, CO2, global warming etc, ‘is’ black & white, and measurable accurately by experiment. Although it depends who is doing the experiment. Some science guys end up looking like fools trying to prove the greenhouse theory because their experiments are flawed. But with atmospheric gases there is much documented proof of their characteristics so it is easier to prove a point accurately.
The size, weight, heat transfer characteristics etc, of gas molecules cannot be debated because they have been measured very accurately. But if we put those gas molecules back into their natural environment, we have to start describing them in different ways because their behaviour is not the same as it is in a sealed labratory flask. You wouldn’t describe gas movement in a flask as ‘wind’ or precipitation as ‘rain’. These are terms which enable descriptions in the atmosphere.
So there is a very clear dividing line between the absolute science behind different aspects of the weather, but when they are all brought together in an atmospheric setting then the goal posts change. The individual characteristics don’t change but the overall characteristic of all the aspects working together does. This is what the weather is, but although words can be chosen to describe the behaviour of individual aspects of the weather, it’s a completely different ball game to try and fit a description to the whole lot working together as it is with a typhoon. There has to be an overlap of descriptions because that is what weather is. Lots of different aspects all overlapping one another and creating new aspects, but ones which are very difficult to measure accurately.
So although we have a useful scale of windspeeds and their associated terms we should not lose sight of the fact that the weather itself has no such boundaries. We don’t have to interpret 74mph but we do have to interpret the difference between a typhoon and a tropical storm.
But because the dividing line is infinitely small, any margin of error is naturally going to invade it’s neighbouring descriptor. So what looks like an accurately measurable characteristic to a scientist (windspeed), is in fact immeasurable accurately, due to constantly changing characteristics (gas temperature changes and density causing different windspeeds across a large area). The only way to describe these merged characteristics is using words (or averages), as no useful scale could be realistically applied. I know a line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere to make descriptions somewhat useful, but that doesn’t negate the application of descriptors which cover two or more characteristics at once, bypassing the absolute scale for simplicity of understanding.
Rain is a major part of what a storm is, but is it still a storm if it doesn’t rain?
Looking again at the ‘audit’ ( http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/data/WAaudit.pdf )this is the sort of thing I find disturbing:
Forecast:
“Around 28-30 July
(action butNOT named storms)
Pacific active Tropical depressions likely
but only 50% risk of developing into
Typhoons”
This was then confirmed and the forecast outcome labelled as a success.
“Confirmed – No named typhoons or
TS formed in this window”
However there was a 50% risk stated of typhoon development, so presumably if a typhoon had formed that too would have been a ‘success’.
[No TD’s (or TS’s) formed in this time period, including +/- 1 day yet the forecast itself was still labelled as a success.]
This is often a feature of Piers forecast wording and evaluation, there is sometimes no chance to be wrong and I fear that his much trumpeted success rates are very misleading, especially to the casual observer.
He used to teach statistics at university level so I wonder if he is subconsciously using words which will give him a better chance of success, but not consciously doing so?
When you have been trained to think a certain way for long enough, you can find it difficult to break free of the mental shackles.
I think this quote from George sums it up.
“‘blackwhite’
Applied to the Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
George Orwell, ‘1984’
“Take the current example being discussed. ……..it’s a matter of exaggerated claims of success.”
-I cant argue with that.
Given the apparent discrepancy, is it possible that “Weathernet” is also the name of Piers’ hamster,
as well as this lot:
http://www.weathernet.co.uk/legal-weather-report-historical-data.php
Martin Gordon says:
July 14, 2012 at 11:38 am
Lovely find, Martin. Forecast a 50% chance of typhoons, and claim success because no typhoons formed.
Truly, that’s forecasting genius at work there, that’s one for the record books. You can see how he can claim an 85% SUCCESS RATE and the like …
w.
For those who wonder why I haven’t followed up further on a possible bet with Piers, I’m still waiting for him to tell me when and where he is forecasting how much rain.
To recap the bidding, Piers said he predicted that “the Olympic opening ceremony in London on 27th July will suffer disruptive downpours etc”, and asked if anyone wanted to bet on it.
I said I was interested, if he’d spell out the details, viz:
See, a bet has to have a definitive yes/no answer. Either a team won or they lost. Either your frog jumped further than the other guy’s frog, or it didn’t. With a bet like this one, to have a definitive yes/no answer we need to know three things:
1. How much rain is he forecasting?
2. Where is the rain gauge that will be used to measure it?
3. What is the time period for the measurement?
So I asked for that information. He has now come back to say:
Well, I’m still interested, but I won’t offer him 4 to 1 odds. That’s a sucker’s bet, rain falls about one day in two in London on August 27th, the day of the opening ceremonies.
But the real problem is, I still can’t even think about a bet until he says how much rain, measured over how much time, where. I’m still where I started.
So I’m still willing to bet, I’m just waiting for Piers to tell me what his exact forecast is for the “disruptive downpour” he is so confident about—you know, something like “I, Piers Corbyn, hereby forecast that there will be more than 12 mm of rain falling between noon and midnight on August 27th, as measured by the Heathrow rain gauge”.
This lack of specificity is a recurring problem with Piers’s forecasts, and it is compounded by the chorus of people saying “close is good enough”. Close is not good enough. Forecasting is a game, but a game has to have black-and-white rules. You can’t play soccer and then one day say “well, the ball didn’t go in the net, but it was a tough shot from a long ways away, and it hit the post, so we’ll award the Spanish a half point.” That way lies madness … not to mention lots of fistfights with the Italians.
The same is true with forecasts. You can’t say “well, he didn’t get it right, but it was a tough forecast from a long ways away, we’ll award Piers a half point”. Piers picks the dates of his forecasts, and he picks the things he is going to forecast. And I’m sorry, but if he forecasts a hurricane in the Atlantic on June 5th, a tropical storm on that date doesn’t even begin to qualify as a success. If he wanted to claim tropical storms as a success, he should have forecast a tropical storm on June 5th. If he didn’t, that’s his lookout, he’s still wrong.
w.
I can just see 10,000 pairs of feet on the green and pleasant meadow of “The Isles of Wonder”, posing as Avalon with Tor et al, turn into a Glastonbury festival style mud bath. I don’t think it will be dry day, Piers doesn’t think it will be a dry day, and dryday don’t think it will be a dry day either. http://www.dryday.com/united-kingdom/england/east-london-30-day-weather-forecast/
Maybe Danny Boyle should have got a long range forecast.
We’re moving along through July, so here’s a bit more of Pier’s forecast for the month, for the 13th and 14th of July:
OK, so the “Solar Factor”, whatever that might be, is rated “R4” from the 13th to mid-day on the 14th. According to Piers this means greatly increased “rain, tornado and giant hail risk”. So how did that pan out? From here:
I’m scoring this one as a total failure. Not only was there nothing happening in the forecast areas, there was uncharacteristically little storm, wind, or hail anywhere in the US on the days on which he forecasts “Major thunderstorms, with large hail, tornados and local flooding”. Even the folks playing at “close is good enough” have nothing to grasp onto here, Piers wasn’t even close with this one.
To be continued as the month progresses … In passing, I note that Piers has not attempted to defend his claim of success in forecasting six typhoons in the central/western North Pacific in July 2008. Since there were only two typhoons that July, it would be hard to defend, but I would think some kind of explanation would be called for.
w.
I note that Piers is declaring this period (13/14) a success on the Weather Action website.
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=472&c=5
Three things are being used to confirm the forecast:
i) A Facebook conversation about storms in Seattle – the forecast does mention ‘some thunder’ for this area.
ii) A very misleading headline “BIGGEST hail for 30 years” The link leads to a posting by a resident of Everett who had never seen hail of the size shown, the photograph shows a not very large piece of hail in the hand of a young boy.
iii)Finally a couple of Severe Thunder Warnings are used to confirm the forecast. I see no evidence that these warnings materialised into actual storms.
Martin Gordon says:
July 15, 2012 at 5:31 am (Edit)
I note that Piers is declaring this period (13/14) a success on the Weather Action website.
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=472&c=5
Thanks for the link, Martin. I hope folks are starting to see why Piers claims such a high success rate. Here’s his map for the period:
OK, so what are the important parts of his forecast? Obviously, it’s the shaded areas where he predicts “thunder, tornados, and giant hail” in the north central region, and “thunder, tornados, and large hail”, in red meaning extreme warning, for the Great Lakes and eastward.
Here are his claims that he says “verify” his forecast.
Let me echo Martin’s amazement that a single comment on Facebook is taken as a verification of his forecast. Anyhow, here’s the Facebook comment (emphasis mine)
To which Piers replies:
I suppose you could claim that someone on Facebook saying “severe thunderstorms possible” is a verification of the forecast, but take a look at the actual weather service reports for those two days …
No, hail in Oregon absolutely does not confirm a forecast of hail in the upper midwest, or Great Lakes/New England. Piers forecast said NOTHING about hail in the Pacific Northwest, this is totally bogus.
Again, there may have been a “severe thunderstorm watch” for Idaho … so what? Take another look at the actual storms (above). I gotta give him credit, though … he has used other people’s warnings and claims that thunderstorms are “possible” and thunderstorm watches, in other words other people’s forecasts, as confirmation of his own forecasts. This is sheer forecasting genius, right up there with claiming that a forecast of a 50% chance of a typhoon was verified by no typhoons.
Finally, take another look at the map of his forecasts, and compare it to the storm reports. The few places that there actually was hail in the US were places that he did not forecast hail. The places he gave the strongest forecast for extreme thunderstorms, hail, and tornados saw only a couple scattered thunderstorms, not a single report of hail, and no tornadoes.
And yet he is trumpeting these results as a verification of his forecast? I gotta say, “verification” must mean something very different on his planet.
w.