Weather Forecast

[mercalia]

well Emmageddon has arrived in Streatham London. Been snowing now for 3 hours +

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Both doors had snow piled up against them, which then froze.
Next time I will clear off snow before I retire, we don't get freezing rain that often.

I normally lube locks before ice in winter on cars, you get freezing rain on locks that are dry and will take time to defrost.

My front door blocked by frozen snow, lucky we have some thaw, other wise would have to ask builder next door to dig us out!

My most used door had a triple lock like pvc doors, which are somewhat exposed to rain hence the problem, the actual locks were ok.............never lock the front door as its porch.

[fausto copy]

We've had snow on and off all day and have a good 3 inch covering, with drifts around the garden up to a foot at least.
The roads are still like sheet ice and apart from the farm 4x4 the only other transport on the road has been a sledge.
Most unusual for these parts.

[thirdcrank]

... Oh sure, but everything's a level tougher there. (ie in Canada)...

I don't think it does us any harm to get a bit of perspective over things like this. I've now lost count of the times when I've been having a chunter with one or other of my BOF cronies about 1963 and all the snows of yesteryear stuff and I've mentioned that I have friends in Canada .... .

This thread has been about weather forecasting and reporting. I think it's fair to say the media have not distinguished themselves here. In the desperate rush for sensation, we've had all the rubbish about the Beast from the East which initially led people in relatively unaffected areas to assume it was yet another cry of "Wolf!" This is an example of where a bit more factual reporting of the public information type would have been more use. I think the telly is particularly bad in this respect because they are obsessed with pictures to accompany reports. On our regional BBC news, Look North we've had H Gration - who's old enough to know better - out there ramping it up so there was no superlatives left when it got worse after the first damp squib couple of days. On the first evening, it appeared some inventive sound operative had had the bright idea of removing the muffle from the microphone so the wind sounded really bad, drowning out the waffle.

So, we've had it bad by our standards but it could be worse.

[Cyril Haearn]

It may not (Maybot?) be over yet

[ncutler]

I'm surprised by this conversation. I frequently look at the Met Office forecasts on t'web ( https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/ ) and find that over the last few years they have improved beyond recognition and are now remarkably accurate.

What a forecast can't do is tell you exactly when it's going to rain in a particular village, which appears to be the thing that most people are worried about. What it usually does do is give you a very good idea of temperature, wind speed, humidity, air pressure and trends, together with a narrative of what is likely to happen. It's worth studying them through time: you soon get a sense of how the weather arrives and what to expect next.

This area has many micro-climates: the hills, the valleys, the coastal plain ...... you might expect forecasts hopelessly lacking in detail. Quite often my wife looks at the morning forecast and announces that the thick cloud will come at 2pm. I argue about this: can't be that accurate, the granularity isn't that fine, it's only a general indication .......... and guess what happens: it clouds over at ten past two.

I always believe that reviewers should reveal their interests ( I once read a review of a motorbike that complained about the power, I remember it clearly "wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding". When I had test ride I nearly fell off the back on opening the throttle: clearly the reviewer was a balls-out racing lunatic whereas I was just a gentle tourist ). So bear in mind that my main uses for forecasts are light aviation and sailing, not gardening, and both light aircraft and sailing boats are bothered by weather fronts, wind, and bad visibility in ways that bicycles are not, and they are not much bothered by rain or temperature.

[Mick F]

All snow and ice has gone.
Mild for early March at 5degC
Wind gone too.

[Bonefishblues]

All snow and ice has gone.
Mild for early March at 5degC
Wind gone too.

Pleased to hear it. Diet change?

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Forecasts are accurate and useful, as good as it gets.

All my life people have moaned about the weather and the forecast.

But I agree about the media, its not just the weather as we know, they call that journalism..............there are many names for what it really is.

I once made a complaint to BBC about the use of children, more the way they portrayed them on TV.
Children should be shown as their age not attempting to make them look older / intelligent...............

They got the message.............but have resorted to showing more and more school age children to oh and ah at..........
I need a particular lever before I can complain again about their silly sick game.....and that's our BBC.

Our local and national BBC luv to show over exaggerated camera shots.......sending reporters and crew to any puddle to gloat over................with all the social media we have today why do we need a blow by blow report of what we have all seen before.

Stick to useful reporting which is factual but not obsessive.
I guess some watchers get off on all the media hype..................especially the bits of heroes getting to work...............many years ago we just walked everywhere...some were lucky to have a bike, which at the time would prove pretty useless by todays standard anyway.

If its our BBC then lets have our say instead of some unknown very selective committees who always when pressured resign / pass the buck.

It cant be just me who can see the promoting of certain businesses by BBC who need a step up as they are finding it hard to compete on the level.

ITV4 news can take some of the blame too, but theirs seems more political, though they tend to concentrate on stuff not given air time by BBC.

Lets get back to real reporting of real news.

Weather is thawing in Torbay and its raining

[Mick F]

All snow and ice has gone.
Mild for early March at 5degC
Wind gone too.

Pleased to hear it. Diet change?

Just come home from Lidl's in Tavistock.
Surprising amount of residual snow there, and I parked the car on snow. Well ........ the front wheels were on snow.

I must say, that some of the shelves were empty. Mainly perishables - milk, bread, fruit and veg - but other stuff was quite low too. They obviously have had supply problems due to the weather.

Diet change?
Amongst other things, I bought eight bottles of Hob Goblin. I left another eight on the shelf for others to buy.

[Bonefishblues]

It's an unusual cure, but if it works for you, I'll not gainsay it because it sounds like much fun

[reohn2]

The problem now will be the thaw for those in flood susceptible areas,the lake district and Carlisle spring to mind along with some areas of Yorkshire

[fausto copy]

We've still got a couple of inches and it actually snowed a tiny bit this morning, but.....
it is thawing at last and the top level crunchy ice has disappeared, so it's much safer to walk about.
Some folk in the village have been getting out in their cars, probably desperate to get to Tescos to stock up again.
Meanwhile, others have been checking on the old folks and popping down to the village shop for newspapers for them.

[Mistik-ka]

Images of the 'Beast from the East' in continental Europe (how's that for side-stepping a popular political thread elsewhere in The Tea Shop?), the U.K. and Ireland made Canada's CBC National News last night. Watching from Saskatchewan, where cold is generally more notable than snowfall, I confess I'm impressed. I think your weather for the last few days qualifies as Serious Winter by anyone's standards.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
The BBC or other interviewed a woman fro Siberia.............minus 30 (C/F?).............she said the kids get sent home when minus 45 - 50
Otherwise they have no problems with their temp, transport etc.
Fuel for heating is supplied and they have to pay....................