I'm fairly new to the MB and there are undoubtedly many on here who are more knowledgeable than me but I would like to 'chip in' on this one if it's ok. The ensembles will never give you any degree of accuracy as they are positively and negatively weighted to varying degrees, so there is bound to be scatter in FI. It's like driving your car in a straight line and then doing it again but turning the steering wheel slightly, after 10 meters the car will be in pretty much the same position as before after 100 meters your position will be considerably different and it's the same with the ensembles The object of the ensembles is firstly to be indicative of the accuracy of the control run. If there is a wide scatter from the start, it means that confidence in that particular run is low, alternatively if there is a wide correlation in the ensembles the chances of the control run synoptics coming off are more likely. Secondly the ensembles do help identify trends. If you look in FI during the summer and you note that one of the ensembles is out on its own predicting 18C at 850hpa. You would normally dismiss this as an outlier and rightly so, however the following day two members are taking the same route and the next day three members etc. How many times have we seen patterns like this evolve over the summer for heat and for winter cold. If anything there is nothing wrong with the ensembles, it's us as human beings who need to improve our ability to read them both mathematically and visually. As for predicting our weather with 75% accuracy, it depends how strictly you set your targets and measure results. I could predict the next 10 winter CET’s to be between 2.5C and 5.5C and be confident of meeting the 75% success rate! Without wanting to sound flippant I'm just emphasising how such a target would be difficult to measure or quantify. The beauty of meteorology is that it's an evolving science. Whereas Maths and Physics are right/wrong, black/white etc, meteorology will never be that. We will continue to improve in our quest for better accuracy and to do this we need ensembles, LRF's, alternative theories etc. It's easy to dismiss something because it doesn't sound right at the time (i.e the world is round etc) but we need to keep our minds open. Apologies if I've waffled on, I think I need a drink now! Regards Adrian