Yeti
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Should Scotland have it's own weather service?
Yes, is my answer.
Scotland has a more diverse and wide raging climate than Enlgland and would benefit from more local knowledge.
The snow on Friday was completely unforecast by the Met, where as the 'snow' events in England are well advertised if not completly over ramped.
Yes, some say that South East England is more important economically than elsewhere. All I can say is, did anyone even notice when London shut down last week?
Not sure I agree with that - England's record temperatures exhibit a wider range than Scotland (-26 to 38 compared to -27 and 33 I think) and there is a huge difference between inland parts of the NE and the SW/SE (Scotland has no places that could be classed as "warm" in summer like London).
However it experiences more extreme weather events than England (snow, cold and windstorms), which affect Scotland more severely.
They've all been ruled by a king and been independent of any other nation....but currently are not countries and have no autonomy.
The only place in England that has an argument for being very "different" in terms of language, history and heritage (similar to Scotland) is Cornwall.
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Typical upmarket Cumbria dwelling (home to a family of 12):
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: That made me laugh did that!
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It'd affect me because I'm a British citizen
What next? Mercia, Wessex, Strathclyde and East Anglia all wanting their own Met Office?
Oh, wait, Strathclyde includes parts of modern Scotland ...... ohh fight, fight, fight
Edit: Anyone offer 1 single way in which a Met Office based in Edinburgh would be more effectve with regards weather forecasts in Scotland than one in Exeter - or indeed, Los Angeles or Sydney? I can't think of any possible way it'd be better?
Those areas aren't, and never have been, countries, whereas Scotland (compared to many areas in Europe such as Bavaria) has a very high degree of autonomy, on a par with the Basque Country and Cataluña.
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What are you talking about?!
I said "parts of the NE and Cumbria", as in, "parts of the NE and parts of Cumbria"
Take a trip out to Maryport and you will see what I mean!
to be quite honest, northern scotland would be infinitely better served under the norwegian warning system than the uk one.Geographically they are closer, even in the sense that the norwegian met office has to forecast for remote mountainous areas.
Ok, perhaps not mainland scotland, but Shetland and Orkney do seem far more akin to oslo than to london.
Luckily for the Northern Isles, they have their own weather servicehttp://www.northisles-weather.co.uk/ which is a prime example of what we could do if we set up our own met office.
And the met office should give as good a service to ALL parts of of the UK, not just the south of england. Meteorology should be entirely separate from geographical politics, or even population distribution as far as possible. It also needs to rethink what it sees as central Britain.Everywhere north of Birmingham is not 'the north.' Central Britain is somewhere between Manchester and Carlisle. Perhaps they need to rethink the use of the word Britain when they really mean England.
As for the above comment, I'm bewildered by that too!!
I always thought that cumbria was like argyll-a rural place with a few nice towns with the main industry being tourism. I never thought of it as being a poor area.
Probably a typo or some other error
Didn't you know, the North starts at Watford?
I class Northern England as Yorkshire northwards.
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I sent an email to the Metoffice this afternoon to see when the Jan CET was coming out. However, I was surprised by the comment at the bottom:
Dear David
Thank you for your enquiry.
The Met Office is world renowned for its expertise and in order to best deal with your correspondence it has been forwarded to a colleague with specialist knowledge in the area you have outlined.
At the Met Office we are committed to providing you with the information you requested quickly and accurately, although this will be subject to the complexity and nature of your enquiry.
If you have any further questions or need additional information please contact the Weather Desk on 0870 9000 100 where one of our advisors will be happy to help you. The number is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Weather Desk Advisor
Met Office, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3PB, United Kingdom.
Tel: 0870 900 0100 Fax: 0870 900 5050 Email: enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk http://www.metoffice.gov.uk
Met Office climate change predictions can now be viewed on Google Earth
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/google/
Is there really any need to shove it down people's throats like this? It's a private email for God's sake! I can't help thinking it might have the opposite effect on people to what they want.
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yep, i see place in the north of england as being more like parts of scotland than the south east (not just in being constantly overlooked :lol: )
Yep, especially considering the countryside - Nern England is very similar to the Southern Uplands and the Lakes are like the Highlands (if a bit smaller!)
Wrt the southern bias in the media - it's so obvious I cannot believe southerners cannot see it. The other day I was watching the news and they were talking of horrendous snow in the Midlands. The correspondent was there hyping up how bad it was and she was talking for ages about it, "blizzards", "drifting", "severe snowfall" etc.
Then the presenter asked her how much had fallen and she said 2 inches. Now I was sitting there and snow was still falling; 4 inches had fallen the previous night (10 in total) and it didn't even get a mention. And I hardly live in a remote area! Leeds is 25 minutes away and it's the 4th biggest city in Britain. This to me proves the southern bias, it is beyond doubt.
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Still snow on the roads and pavements here; 10cm in the back garden although it's getting patchy in places.
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Perhaps this displays (your own) southern bias. Been nothing "dreadful" about it in these northern landscapes of ours.
Coldest temps in decades, snowfall galore, highest wind gusts for a few years, frontal snow from a westerly (at least twice)..Been a joy to watch actually :-)
I agree, it's been excellent and I have seen a lot more snow than most places in the S. The problem is that this never gets reported, so southerners think they did a lot better. What's more, I still have 10cm of snow in the garden; snow has been lying for 2 weeks now which is something I'm sure nowhere in the S can claim.
I think Scotland and Nern England are in the same boat really.
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I also see room for Scotland to be independent; I'd just be worried about the future after oil, but then again, I'm no expert! It's certainly a great country and is very different to the UK, having had a separate history and culture for hundreds of years.
And Edinburgh, without a shadow of doubt in my mind, is the finest city out there
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, the London point was hypothetical. I don't actually expect you to go for a walk in London just because I told you to haha.
The funding for the Scottish Government's bodies can come from Scotland's own pocket in my opinion. I'm afraid the one who's splitting hairs here is you, you seem to be insinuating that Ireland's Met Office is fine. If Ireland's Met Office was to merge with the UKMO, there would be a lot of money saved, so the point here is one of principles and not of cash. Either way, if Scotland decided to have its own Met Office, it wouldn't concern you since you're an English citizen. Let's not split hairs here, Scotland and Ireland are in the same position here.
My main point is that independence should come first, then a Scottish Met Office.
I take your point but I suppose the difference between Scotland and Ireland is that Scotland does have the UKMO doing a reasonable job, whereas if Ireland gave up there would be no other Meto for them. It could be a devolved matter and hence something for the Scots to sort out for themselves. But is it really worth it? Only if the UKMO does a poor job for Scotland and if frequent complaining produces no results IMO.
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Some great points there Yeti, despite the fact that we may not be in agreement.
It's a contraversial issue as to whether Scotland has actually taken much money out of the English taxpayer's pocket in comparison to the loss of revenue from Scotland's oil, the truth of the matter is that we'll never know. What we do know is that legally, the oil belongs to Scotland. It should be noted that Norway, a nation of similar population and population density is one of the wealthiest nations in the world per head of capita. Also, Norway doesn't have an international city, Oslo and Glasgow are similar in population, and Edinburgh is the second most important banking city in the UK (and among the largest financial centres in Europe). Luxembourg, the wealthiest nation on earth per head of capita, doesn't have a major international city at all.
The point that we are UK students is, undoubtedly, a difficult one. Devolution is fantastic for enhancing democracy, and the result of devolution is that we are free to choose whether or not English students should be permitted to study for free at our universities. As a nation, we decided that there are too many English students to study for free in Scotland. Consider this, if we were to offer free university level education to English students, the number of English students that would flock to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde would be far higher than it is now, and how is that fair compared to the OTHER English students that must remain at home in England and pay for their education? These universities are already competitive enough and Scotland has to take steps to ensure that its own youth (and postgraduate students respectively) have a fair chance of getting into their own country's universities.
With regards to the point on oil production, new developments in drilling have seen the potential to drill an amount of oil three times higher than has already been found in the future.
Cities like London perpetuate inequalities, the top 5% of English citizens own about 60% of the nation's wealth. As we are both socialists, I know that you are already aware of the massive inequalities.
The Scottish Times or just the Times? Oh, and take a walk from Canary Warf to another, less fortunate area of London, seems this fantastic growth has only gone into the hands of a few
Again you make some good points. I certainly agree about London and the South East; there is huge inequality about and you only need to come to Yorkshire to realise that England isn't all wealth. Yes, Harrogate is a wealthy town and Leeds is (arguably) on a par with Edinburgh for finance, but there are still some desperately poor areas around here - areas of Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield and of course other even poorer places in the North (Liverpool, parts of the NE and Cumbria). Scotland isn't free from inequality either - overall it's the 2nd wealthiest UK region, but compare the wealithiest areas of Edinburgh to the poorest areas of Glasgow and I think it would be self-explanatory. Glasgow, indeed, has some of the poorest places in the country - I read recently that one area had 97% of children growing up below the poverty line. Perhaps if we were to break down regions into smaller areas we would be able to distribute wealth more fairly.
To be fair to Scotland, it doesn't charge English students as much as English universities do. I have applied to Edinburgh (awaiting a decision!) and whilst my 4 English choices will be £3200 per year, in Edinburgh I think it's about £1600 - not equal, but it's a sizeable reduction and would be enough to sway a decision either way. I suppose it's difficult to say whether Scottish unis would be swamped if they charged no fees to the English however; it might not make that much of a difference as in my experience finance doesn't seem on the agenda for most prospective students (hence why the London universities are still incredibly popular). Also, you can't really say it would be unfair on English students who chose to stay at home to pay more, because apart from Law students, you would be completely free to go to whatever uni you wanted and if you chose to stay in England you couldn't complain if the choice was there.
Wrt comparing Scotland to Norway and Luxembourg, this is done a lot imo however, I don't think you can really compare any two countries. For example, Norway makes one heck of a lot of money through tourism, which Scotland fails to do despite having the most stunning scenery in the UK, arguably Europe (partly due to the weather mind). Although I must say it's a failure of the UK and Scottish government to exploit this resource more because if people in Europe knew how stunning Nern England and Scotland were, a lot more would come, of that I am sure.
Luxembourg, on the other hand, is extremely important within the EU and NATO and a lot of its revenue comes from being centres of these two organisations. Switzerland, we all know about.Undoubtedly then, oil is vital for Scotland at the moment. However no advances in technology can prevent an end to the supply; all they can do is prolong this end. One day, Scotland will have to live withough oil. I believe two other important industries are information technology and banking; whether these are enough to support an independent state I don't pretend to know, but they are, at least, growing, and isn't Scotland resisting the credit crunch a lot better? (All those thrifty minds eh!)
Regards
David
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Right, let's discuss this piece by piece.
Scotland doesn't allow English students to study for free because there are too many of them. There are a lot more English students in my university than there are European (Glasgow University). In fact, of the 30 or so English students that I know personally, about 25 or so of them are of direct Scottish descent.
Scotland has constitutional jurisdiction over 90% of the UK's oil reserves.
The part in bold Yeti is actually quite offensive. Also, it's odd that you think there's little economic potential in a country with the highest number of university graduates per head of capita in Europe. However, I understand that this can be an uncomfortable issue for many English, and indeed Scottish people to discuss and I realise that it can sometimes be irritating.
Sure, as soon as you give us our oil money back.
OK well firstly I apologise if it came across as offensive
I take your point about the high number of university graduates; however, the problem lies more in the country itself. There is no truly international city like London, nor is there any particularly large city like Madrid, London, Paris, Barcelona etc. which makes independence without oil rather tricky.
And no one can deny that the oil won't last forever. Decent production will be nearly over by 2020 unless a major new field is found. Without oil things become a lot more difficult for Scotland.
Also, I think it's unfair to say that we need to "give Scotland back" its oil. To be fair, you have seen many, many privileges over the years, university and nursing home fees to mention but two. You certainly get a better deal than the English, and we, ultimately, pay for this difference.
Finally, I see it differently about there being "too many" English students about. We are the United Kingdom and should behave as such. English and Scottish students are all UK students, we are paying to fund Scottish universities at least as much as the Scots are so we should not be restricted in going there, just as Scots are most welcome here. In fact, we contribute more than any other group, and a hell of a lot more than EU students, so it seems a tad unfair that we then are the only group that has to pay AGAIN to go there. If you were a separate country such as Ireland, it would be a different story
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Scotland is given such financial privileges due to its contribution to the UK's oil reserve. I may be wrong but I'm fairly sure that Scotland is the most oil-rich country in Europe, excluding western Russia.
Well if we become independent which is looking increasingly likely then I suppose we'll have to.
I'm sorry but the question of Scottish finance makes me very angry!
As far as I am aware, Scotland is given a disproportionate amount of money compared to England due to its relative poverty compared to England. However, whilst it's easy to say that it's poorer, if you look, I think it's the second or third wealthiest region in the UK, once you break England down into London/SE, Yorkshire and Humber etc. Scotland is significantly wealthier than Yorkshire and the Humber, but we see less money coming in. It's extremely unfair because Scots go to university for free, whereas we have to pay. In fact, if you come from anywhere within the EU except England, it's free. As far as I am concerned it doesn't deserve such treatment. After all, it adds little to the UK's economy as a whole; it has rich oil reserves (although now very depleted), but cannot compare to the financial industry of the SE (again, a question of population). Also, oil won't last for ever! So if it gets independence, which as you say is looking more and more likely, no doubt it will come back on its knees to England as it remembers the privilages it once had as part of the UK and oil has run out. Without oil, I'm afraid, there's little economic potential there, as beautiful and friendly a country as it is.
A little OT but I had to say it. Wrt a Scottish Metoffice, I don't see any need, although I certainly think it should be broken down into smaller regions on the BBC especially, due to its climate being as varied as England's.
I think that you might be mistaken there... you aren't devolved to the point of being a Sovereign State, and besides, you might manage them, but I'm fairly sure you don't fund 100% of them... but I'm game if you are. Hell, I'd love a tax cut as a result!That wouldn't happen - no doubt our taxes would increase to pay for a Scottish met office because of our "wealth"
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Just sent an email to the Metoffice and this is their reply so far:
Dear DavidThank you for your enquiry.
The Met Office is world renowned for its expertise and in order to best deal with your correspondence it has been forwarded to a colleague with specialist knowledge in the area you have outlined.
At the Met Office we are committed to providing you with the information you requested quickly and accurately, although this will be subject to the complexity and nature of your enquiry.
If you have any further questions or need additional information please contact the Weather Desk on 0870 9000 100 where one of our advisors will be happy to help you. The number is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Kind Regards
Will let you know as soon as this expert gets back to me!
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have those of you who see a 'plot' about the late release of the January data thought about sending an e mail to the Met O and asking politely when it may come out, and why their link is no longer there?
Just done that.
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Quite a large area is over 700ft and a reasonable amount over 800ft and Cranham/Birdlip approaching 1000ft - as you say enough to make a difference over the last 2 weeks.
Stil 2 -3 inches in the shade around my area the rest returned to grass yesterday plus major piles still knocking around from cleared car parks/roads/paths.
I'd imagine they'll go fairly soon now there is no further overnight frost due in the immediate forecast.
Yes sorry but I meant relatively, considering that many areas get to 2000-3000ft in England and Wales.
Even so it has clearly made a big difference.
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Sarks? Or how about Ascensions after Ascension Island? Still one of our bits, apparently, and I cannot imagine it's ever seen a snowflake. Well, not in the recent past.
Ah but it's all about disappointment isn't it. To create an Abingdon, you have to be able to expect snow and then for that snow not to arrive.
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Nice pics James! Despite the Cotswolds not being very high, it's nice they can make all the difference in these setups
Quite a lot of snow there!
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Greenhow is just after Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale. Carry on over the bridge and head UP! It's VERY steep! There is a pub in the village
I believe it's the highest village in Yorkshire, but I can't be certain. If you carry on the road you get to Stump Cross Caverns, and eventually it drops down into Grassington (Wharfedale). In the village there is very often a lot of snow. During the cold zonality last month it had nearly a foot, whilst even in the highest parts of Harrogate there was nothing more than a transitory dusting.
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Perhaps Sillies is not the best alternative anymore...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cornwall/content/arti...9_feature.shtml
Wow. It's getting tricky. We can't have Westminsters, Abingdons, Sillies, Wights...
What's it going to be?
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Shuggs, I suddenly understand the rudimentary miostake that a few on here have been making these past few years.
Mind you, the easy-to-make-if-you're-a-pilot-doing-it-every-day-for-a-lot-of-money-and-with-a-couple-more-crew-up-there-with-you-in-case-you-louse-up imperial - metric error once caused a major air emergency in Canada.
Stratos I have to take issue with some of the SATSIGS measurements. You may have noticed at HQ recently that some posters are giving two snow depths; the first in centimetres and the second in kentimetres. Now for me, this undermines the kentimetre and is an effort to make us believe the centimetre measurement, even though the centimetre measurement is already in kentimetres.
What then, is the given kentimetre measurement? Are they kentikentimetres? Or kentolometres?
Also, Abingdons can no longer exist because the place of origin has now seen Brixtons. Therefore should we not rename them after the one place left where it never snows in the UK? The Isles of Scilly. Sillies?
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I drove up to Greenhow village (420m) today and, as usual, there was a lot of snow, with drifts up to 1.5m in places.
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Bit of a gripe really, not about the weather, but the logic around these snow watch areas.
So this is N&W Yorkshire, Northern & NE England, yet we have another snow watch for East Midlands, Lincolnshire and South and East Yorkshire.
Now South and East Yorkshire would appear to come in to both categories, as they are, subject to whose definition you look at, in Northern and NE England.
I'm confused as to which I should be posting in and don't really have the time to read both as well. I've only just caught up with the Scarborough situation as I've been in the other area!!!! yet it's just up the road from me.
Wouldn't it be more logical to just have a Yorkshire area?????
OK it'a a minor issue, but logical surely?
I suspect it won't have any impact on the weather though. B)
Yes let's just have one for Yorkshire. We are better than everyone else anyway and it would reinforce this fact right across the forum
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Great pic Brian
Thanks for posting, it's great when ppl take the time to post pics rather than just describing the "blizzard" outside!
Enjoy the snow mate.
General Climate Change Discussion
in Space, Science & nature
Posted
Last winter was a fair bit above average in the UK.