The carelessness that upsets the tourist industry.

[Graham Easterling]

South West Forecast

A couple of days prior to yesterday we were told 'The cloud will burn back to the coast' when it was apparent that windward coasts would likely be the sunniest. Though the forecasters always seem to assume coasts are cloudier, even though the stats clearly show the reverse (and especially in the SW where the inland moors are particularly cloudy). It was a lovely afternoon here in Penzance.

Today - the pretty pictures for Penzance tomorrow, which seem reasonable to me

The words, clearly an attempt to destroy the beach side trade (and it works)

Another quite cloudy day with showers, turning heavy at times, largely over Devon and Cornwall. 

What''s wrong with making an attempt. "Inland" at the start & "mainly dry & sunny on windward coasts" at the end would make all the difference. Devon & Cornwall are particularly prone to heavy inland showers under these conditions  due to the convergence of the 2 sea breezes. The word 'windward'  is optional, but allows for the fact the showers developing inland may drift over somewhere like Falmouth Bay briefly in the afternoon, but only if the N gradient wind is strong enough to prevent a sea breeze. I'm sure the models give a clue to whether that's likely or not. 

I cam only assume the MetO have shares in M&S, that's where they all seem to go if there's a bad forecast.

The MetO, as an organisation, seems to be far less than the sum of it's component parts, its the organisation, not the staff, which is so exasperating.

Graham

Penzance - Bright through misty low cloud, sun breaking through.

[Graham Easterling]

It gets worse, the current forecast for Penzance is a 70% chance of rain, 2 black rain drops, which is ludicrous. It's sunny, and as far as I can see there's little rain in the whole of Devon & Cornwall. There's is nothing resembling a shower that I can see

Nearby Mousehole 1:30 

Ominous black clouds & people sheltering from the deluge.

The old supercomputers have lost all touch with reality, perhaps opening a few observation sites would help, except that's not in their vision for the future.

I have a book which states with the new improved models, something like the Boscastle storm would be picked up in future, rather than issue a warning as people were being winched into helicopters. Strange no warning was ever issued for Coverack then.

Even 3 hours after the storm 20mm was being quoted, a 0 still missed off the end. I'd been watching the radar all afternoon. The anvil was huge even from Penzance. This was the anvil from Sennen, 30 miles away.

but at no point did the MetO pick up on it until well after the event.

I think perhaps they've lost track of the need of just forecasting the weather for the next few hours, which is what people want.

Graham

Penzance

[Len W]

Broad brush warnings for thunderstorms were issued across the south of England  including Cornwall :-) yesterday.

But that's all you got. No detail of where because the numerical models can't be that specific. So we had flash flood in several places especially near Chard that were not forecast.

Met O claim that they will be able to forecast these with more computing power in the future.

It's not just computing power that is needed, understanding the physics and feedbacks is vital.

Although Met O forecasts are updated hourly, there seems no reference to what the obs are showing, as has often been pointed out by Graham and others.

The numerical output at the 10 km scale is often unrealistic.

We need a warning of a flash flood in our 10 km grid square an hour before it happens. Not when it is happening.

This is a tall order and one I believe is impossible to achieve despite all the positive posturing from UK Met Office.

Of course they have to do  positive posturing in order to get funding. It just irks me that it mostly goes into supercomputing and that is a bottomless pit.

Len

Wembuy