Insert Name Here

Nice to see Scotlands weather seems to have moved to the south of england this year. Must be plenty happy storm enthusiasts down there.

Glad I didnt warn any of my non weather geek friends about this one. Friday on the other hand looks a bit more challenging. Fortunately Ill be in Portugal by then worrying about my house from afar

Starting to show me its teeth a wee bit now here.

Seems to have run its course here too. The odd blast but maybe were getting used to this now. Seems like weve been living in severe gales for nearly a month now but this one is nothing special.

Startin to get a wee bit noisy up here too now. A gentle spring day seems like the stuff of dreams right now.

Och here we go again. I am getting tired of the constant roar of wind around my house up here. MEH!

Starting to get very breezy here in Ayrshire now

Its probably fair to say that the models used in 1987 would hardly even be able to predict this event 3 days beforehand. No cray supercomputers back then.

RAF Locking nearby

I slept through most of it in 1987 I must admit. I had just finished my RAF training that day and had decided to spend the night in the barracks and head off early the next day. Everyone else had left so I had a draughty big barrack block all to myself. Im still amazed I slept so much as I do remember waking up and hearing windows smash etc but I just stayed put and pretended it wasnt happening. It took me all day the next day to travel from weston super mare to oxford and Im surprised I even made it thru. It was carnage.I musta been tired that night though

Holy Moly Thats a Scottish storm that got lost. Cripes

No sneering here. Im lamenting the frequent lack of warnings for similar events farther north. Nice to see early warnings being given for the south but I have unfortunately seen storms like this come to fruition up here with sometimes no formal warnings whatsoever. A serious storm is equally serious to anybody who happens to be unfortunate enough to find themselves under it. I hope this one turns out to be a damp squib whatever track it may take.

When storms like this go over my house and threaten to rip the roof off I feel exactly the same as any one of those 20 million people might.

Hmm . . . glad this one is going south (for now at least) It seems the potential for a timely met office warning is directly proportional to the uk latitude.

Best avoided because its a straw man.

Agreed. Our METO is among the best in the world. Their forecasting in the short, medium and long term is among the best in the world. Their severe weather warning system is poor. The implementation of that poor system and the way it was applied in real time on the ground as events unfolded over the last few days was lamentable. (IMHO)

How do you know this?

I disagree. There are countless systems in Public and Private UK that use the severe weather warning status as the discriminator with which to adjust the service level required. An example of which is the haulage industry which will hold or release a driver on a journey by looking at the alert state in effect along the route. As you say, "The MetO is a service for the dumb masses" and this is the very reason that the weather alerts are colour coded for simplicity. The haulage companies do not employ their own meteorologists, nor should they have to as their taxes pay for a METO to do that for them. Your post does however capture the seriousness inherent in having the responsibility to advise whether or not it is safe to carry out certain activities at certain times. It does not however place it on the correct doorstep.

From what I can read out there on the net there seems to be a general feeling that the focus of our once internationally renowned Met Office seems to have become somewhat diluted when their mandate was split and the climate change agenda fell into their remit as well as the core function of UK weather forecasting. Whilst it is patently obvious to anybody over 40 that our climate is changing the question of whether or not it is anthropomorphic (man made) remains to be proven. This is a subject which is probably best avoided in this discussion. I for one am still on the fence on that one however the fact that it raises billions upon billions in taxes is beyond question. If it were the case that Westminster had exerted some influence on Exeter in placing too many of their resources in the tax lucrative area of AGW at the expense of traditional UK weather forecasting it would be unfortunate to say the least however that too will have to remain on the unproven list. Either way their mandate seems to have become diluted. All they would need, to have been able to make their warnings accurate and timely in respect of the here and now would be a team of people keeping an eye on the real time data from all sources. This team needn't necessarily be highly trained. That to me is their most basic function and I cannot think of any mitigation that they could come up with to explain their obvious failure to meet that benchmark over the past couple of days.

This one ? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm

OK Ill kick this off..and I will preface this by saying that I have complained to the METO. (lifted from other thread) Why is discussing the performance of the Met Office considered off topic? Forgive me if I am speaking from a position of inexperience on the forum but is this not a weather thread about January Atlantic storms? I for one think its perfectly relevant. As I said in a previous post, the METO have a responsibility to us as public servants and are one of the very few UK public servants employed in direct connection to the UK weather. Their successfulness or otherwise in providing the UK with appropriate warnings as they are paid to do, seems of paramount relevance to any discussion regarding these storms and most especially on a forum where there is an extremely high percentage of amateur weather forecasters/enthusiasts. The warnings of the METO are more than just badges that some people get miffed about when they dont get issued with one. They are used as benchmarks by many agencies, Public and Private, to establish the necessary level of preparedness in terms of business continuity and more importantly public safety and as such, MUST be accurate and timely. I accept that the science is not exact and applaud them when they do get it right but what I cannot find any excuse for is when they fail to issue warnings for weather that is actually happening on the ground there and then. That is not forecasting, does not require any specific meteorological skill or training and should be expected as a basic starting point for their service to the public. All it requires is the ability to look at the news, read the weather station actuals and perhaps make a phone call or two. The reluctance to criticise in this respect by some here seems bordering on the bizarre at times. Are there many here who are ex Met or have Met friends or other vested interests? As public servants they must accept public criticism of their performance and why shouldn't that be discussed here? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks Coast. The thread seems to be locked though

Why is discussing the performance of the Met Office considered off topic? Forgive me if I am speaking from a position of inexperience on the forum but is this not a weather thread about January Atlantic storms? I for one think its perfectly relevant. As I said in a previous post, the METO have a responsibility to us as public servants and are one of the very few UK public servants employed in direct connection to the UK weather. Their successfulness or otherwise in providing the UK with appropriate warnings as they are paid to do, seems of paramount relevance to any discussion regarding these storms and most especially on a forum where there is an extremely high percentage of amateur weather forecasters/enthusiasts. The warnings of the METO are more than just badges that some people get miffed about when they dont get issued with one. They are used as benchmarks by many agencies, Public and Private, to establish the necessary level of preparedness in terms of business continuity and more importantly public safety and as such, MUST be accurate and timely. I accept that the science is not exact and applaud them when they do get it right but what I cannot find any excuse for is when they fail to issue warnings for weather that is actually happening on the ground there and then. That is not forecasting, does not require any specific meteorological skill or training and should be expected as a basic starting point for their service to the public. All it requires is the ability to look at the news, read the weather station actuals and perhaps make a phone call or two. The reluctance to criticise in this respect by some here seems bordering on the bizarre at times. Are there many here who are ex Met or have Met friends or other vested interests? As public servants they must accept public criticism of their performance and why shouldn't that be discussed here? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Welcome to my world I have now experienced 8 severe storms this winter and two METO red alerts. The damage on my house is minimal thank god and I am thoroughly sick of it too. To all those wishing for more severe weather in their own area, I assure you, the novelty if it ever exists, soon wears off.

I know it is sacrilege to some but it looks like the met office have played another blinder this evening .. .. .. and so soon after the last time .. .. .. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport/forecasters-scrambled-to-update-advice-as-conditions-worsened.16350053 Some of you guys may believe that it is beyond the pale to dare to suggest that they are fallible but they are paid a fortune and given multi million pound resources to do better than the low tech amateurs that populate this forum but it certainly doesnt seem like they do that consistently from where Im standing. I think they have lost their direction somewhat when they became the met & climate change office.