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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    For those of you who think that the trend towards increased subjectivity in forecasts, like the increased frequency at which the phrase "at least it will be mild" is used, is more due to the BBC than the Met Office, here is an article from 2005 that strongly supports that view.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4310702.stm

    Now I'm not sure what to say about the first part of the Met Office's advice, moving away from using scientific language, as of course you get the problem of confusion vs. perpetuating lack of understanding by taking away information- it's a tradeoff. But the second part of their suggestions actually make many of the same points re. spin and subjectivity as I've been making for some time (the paragraph relating to telling people what is good and bad could just as easily have been lifted from one of my posts!). It is clear that the BBC has taken on board the first part of the Met Office's advice and not the second.

    So next time you hear that accursed phrase "at least it will be mild"... don't go blaming the Met Office!
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, after plenty of heated discussions on the TV forecasts, notably recent trends at the Beeb, it's become clear to me what the main problem is: forecasters being encouraged to make people "feel good" by "emphasising positives", and to do that, naturally, they have to second-guess what the majority of the population consider to be good and bad weather.

    The easiest (though certainly not the best) source of such guesses is the general media, so my feelings that the BBC might be trying to "educate" us to see the weather in a certain way have receded- it's probably more that the media makes it look as if we all make an enemy of the weather.

    The equivalent of this, in sports coverage, is the backing of British competitors to make people "feel good" by "emphasising positives"- e.g. ITV F1's strong bias towards Lewis Hamilton in 2007/08. The equivalent of "it will be dull and drizzly but at least it will be mild", in F1 terms, could be "it will probably be a dull processional F1 race but at least Lewis Hamilton has the best chance of anyone on the grid"... so in a nutshell it is definitely a part of the dumbing down process.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    I've seen quite a few debates on so-called "man flu" which is basically a swipe at men saying that they exaggerate how ill they are whereas women just "get on with it". I don't know how much truth there is behind this stereotype.

    Basically we have two extreme positions in circulation- one being "I'll have a day off work if I'm even slightly ill, e.g. a few sniffles" and another being "It doesn't matter how ill you are, you should just get on with it and come into work through thick and thin". I suggest that both extremes do more harm than good.

    I also think that it's too black and white, for instance, to try to encourage people with colds to come into work, because colds come in hugely differing degrees of severity. This weekend, I've had a headache, coughing and sneezing fits, sleep deprivation, sapped energy, asthmatic complications and a slight temperature. I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to come into an office while suffering these symptoms- they genuinely do affect one's ability to work, just "getting on with it" can make it take longer to get over the symptoms, and the coughing and sneezing are the perfect recipe for spreading it around the entire office. But I never have qualms about coming into work while I have just sniffles- they don't have much of an effect on my ability to work, and as long as I wash my hands from time to time, I am unlikely to pass them around.

    I suggest that a similar analysis applies to other illnesses- people should be expected to work through mild illnesses, but not pronounced ones.
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    So onto another topic where I have issues, the entitlement to have opinions.
    The main issue I have with letting people have their opinions, is that there's a line between letting them have opinions, and letting them force their opinions down everyone else's throats. It's like the question of how much a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance- if there's no onus on the intolerant to let people have their opinions, on the grounds that they're entitled to the opinion that nobody should be allowed an opinion but them, then what happens is that the intolerant people force their views on everyone else.
    There are circumstances where opinions are highly likely to be forced down people's throats. For instance, when people are debating laws and rules, or making committal decisions that impact upon others, by definition, a decision will often involve imposing an opinion on others. Or, when "opinions" are just beliefs that are widely accepted without question, whereupon many people will impose those beliefs on others without thinking, because they're accepted as givens. For instance, very few unjust laws or social norms are overturned by people just "letting their followers have their opinions". As an extreme case of where entitlement to opinions can be mutually exclusive, if someone's opinion is that it's okay to murder people, unless we suppress the person's opinion, the person will murder someone, thus imposing their opinion on others.
    There are all kinds of issues surrounding this. For instance, in environmental policy, it's increasingly widely accepted among environmentalists that the only way to solve global warming is to marginalise and alienate motorists, hoping to deter them from driving by making driving worse than the alternatives. If I try to challenge that view- even just with the purpose of making it known that other, potentially legitimate, opinions on the issue exist, I often get told, "let them have their opinions". Of course, if everybody just "lets them have their opinions", their opinions will be imposed on everyone through incremental changes in legislation. Then the hypocrites can come out with "yeah, but people force their opinions on others and that's life". So let's see now, I have to let others have their opinions, but have to accept it as a fact of life that their opinions will be forced on me?
    Tolerance is a great thing, but just as with freedom, it has self-limiting points- if we are too tolerant of the intolerant, the intolerant will force their views on others, by definition making the society less tolerant.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    Had a decent birthday today- indeed I can only remember two years when I haven't had a good birthday- it's probably partly because I make such a big thing of it!
    Got some new clothes, some sweets, and a set of Tom & Jerry DVDs. I haven't seen T & J for a long time, but I remember I used to watch it regularly at my grandparents' and I regularly tuned in to BBC when they showed it until 2000. According to reviews there are some issues with PC censorship (shame on the PC brigade) but haven't noticed any on my two favourite episodes. It was like putting the clock back when I viewed them- and I still find them as funny as I used to as a child.
    Had a good morning going to the local painting club and bringing a nice birthday cake in.
    As for the weather, many people might have noticed me complaining about Cleadon's weather today. Ironically, the post in my previous blog...
    ...turned out to be remarkably accurate, though at least the low cloud stayed off until late evening, giving us a sunny dry day rather than a dull one. And yes, I did hear, much to my angst, about how "lucky" I was to miss the showers.
    Yet another example to put with the rest of why, with the exception of its "thundery wintry showers" episodes in winter that inspired my Net-Weather name, I don't like the climate of the north-east coast. Actually, I think much of the North East has quite a reasonable climate; it's just along the coast that gets on my nerves.
    Might be doing more stuff this weekend. I feel more content with life; some feedback from UEA also about accommodation though I don't know where I'll be living yet, and probably won't know for a while. Some feedback also about Exeter and the Met Office- the PhD, and opportunity to work for the MetO, are feeling more mouth-watering as I get closer to the time. Meteorology has been my main passion since the age of four, and it's great to be in a position where I supply forecasts for an increasingly well-known, respected website (i.e. this one) and can think realistically in terms of pursuing a career in climate-related fields.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    After the thread about gay marriages (which I played a large role in) up comes another controversial and philosophical blog entry.
    I am not homosexual, but I am going to admit to something equally taboo- as things currently stand, I have no ambition to have children. If nobody believes me that it's a taboo, consider the answers I usually get when I say I don't want children:
    "Oh, it's just a phase, you'll grow out of it and you'll want kids when you're older."
    "It's unnatural not to have children."
    "Not having children is selfish because you're unprepared to make sacrifices."
    "Your life is incomplete if you don't have children. If you don't try having children, you will never experience it."
    "All women want to have children because of biology, therefore a woman who doesn't want children is a freak of nature. Men should want children because of their desire for sex, and out of respect for the wishes of the women they marry, who will want children, assuming that they are not freaks of nature."
    "You should have children, you can get your future wife to look after them"
    "You would be a really good father."
    Re the view that not having children is selfish. Surely the real selfish people are the ones who actually do have children, and then don't look after them? That way, people are harmed, whereas by not having children, while one doesn't bring a new life into the world, one doesn't harm anyone.
    As for the idea that one should try having kids otherwise one won't experience it, I think that's a very good argument for decisions where one can turn back if it doesn't turn out well. Having children is a decision where there is no turning back and it shapes the rest of one's life- if it doesn't turn out well, tough.
    I think the image that people who have children always end up better off, and those who don't sometimes regret it, is misleading Many people who have children do genuinely end up better off, but it's also something that a parent has to feel- if a parent has regrets about having kids, how is that going to reflect on the parent and pass over onto the kids? To ensure that they bring up their kids well, they will have to suppress any such regrets. People who don't have kids have no similar self-reinforcing mechanisms that prevent them from having regrets about it, so we end up with a misleading picture of how people feel about having children.
    Some people also decide to have children because it's the done thing. I understand the argument that everyone decides things because they want to do them, and if they didn't want to do them they wouldn't, but social pressure is clever in that it attaches negative 'strings' to particular decisions. If I have a choice between doing A and being rejected (a common example of a negative 'string'), or choosing B and being accepted, I may choose B. From this, it follows that I don't want to do A, but my main reason may be fear of rejection.
    I also feel, incidentally, that measures to increase birth rates in order to tackle the aging population problem are not a good long term solution. In the short term they may work, but in the long term, as the elderly population continues to grow, larger and larger birth rates will be required, presenting risk of an overpopulation spiral.
    Disclaimer: I have nothing against people having children. I also retain an open mind to the possibility that I might change my mind when I am older, and have children. I can't say that I hate children either- indeed I have a reputation for being quite good with them. However, as things currently stand, I don't want to have children of my own, and there's a possibility that my stance will not change, no matter how un-PC it is.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    As a non-driver who studies climate science and takes a strong interest in environmentalism, rather contrarily I'm also a bit of a petrolhead.

    I like motor racing (especially Formula One), have been quad biking in the past, enjoy motor racing games on the computer, and like "sporty" style cars (the ones with rapid acceleration/brakes, rapid cornering and stiff suspensions to make for a ride more akin to being on a rollercoaster instead of gliding along polished glass). I am also a big fan of Top Gear, which is probably my favourite TV program of all at the moment.

    However I also condemn the boy racers, the mindless idiots who drive recklessly (whether for pleasure or otherwise) without regard for safety- of which there are many on the roads, particularly prominent in 17-19 year old macho males. This ties in with my usual recommendation of clamping down on the idiots first and only then thinking of casting the net wider- though it's my usual stance on these kinds of issues anyway.

    As well as being into cars, I also like buses and trains when they're reliable, and I like cycling when there is a decent segregated network available. Cycling is also good for exercise, and getting on a bus or train can be very relaxing. So ideally I would like those to be improved. My favourite example of a good transport system is that of Strasbourg.

    It strikes me that current orthodox transport policies address both issues with a simple and neat solution: clamp down on everyone to legislate for the idiots and also deter car use, with road humps, lower and more absolutely enforced speed limits etc. However I argue that they are simple neat and wrong. They will improve safety but at much larger cost to responsible people than is necessary, and they will achieve a transport equilibrium at a much lower level than is necessary. Many for instance don't want a segragated cycle network because it won't deter car use whereas increasing their rights on the roads will- not good news for me as a prospective cyclist!

    I tend to come in for a lot of stick for my views on transport- like with climate change I have beliefs that incorporate views from both sides of the debate and in between, so it is easy to be lumped together with one side or the other. But in the case of transport it should be easy to see why I have these kinds of contrary views- because I come from a rare background of being an environmentalist, a non-driver, a former bicycle lover, a bus/train lover and a car lover.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    In many walks of life, a journey doesn’t just have to be a means to an end- it can also be about incorporating enjoyment along the way. We see this in sports (referenced in my previous blog) where many fans like to be entertained with end-to-end football matches that end 4-3, in preference to the mechanical grinding out of 1-0 wins.

    We’ve all heard about the major downsides of cars, but they’ve also given society many benefits. The thing is, though, the main advantages of cars are social and recreational, not the simple “getting from A to B”. For example, the freedom to travel where you want, when you want, and increased ability for “spontaneous” type journeys, and for some of us, increased scope to actually derive pleasure from the journey- we aren’t just getting from A to B, we’re also incorporating enjoyment en route to B. This also benefits the tourism and leisure industries (due to more frequent leisure trips) and adds to the car industry, e.g. the market for “sports suspensions” as seen on the likes of the Ford Focus Zetec. There are, as with many recreational freedoms, a minority who drive recklessly with disregard for other road users, but that's what road traffic rules are supposed to be for, to criminalise and punish those who take unacceptably large risks.

    The problem with cars is rather that as a society we’ve become too dependent on them. Far too many of us feel we “have” to drive, particularly for business-related trips. What we really need is to reduce our reliance on the car, to make it more feasible for people to use alternative forms of transport for their business-related journeys, to give people an alternative, while allowing those who enjoy driving to continue to do so. The private car can serve as an excellent recreational tool to help assist with spontaneous and leisure trips, but should not be an absolute neccessity for getting around.

    But that’s not what we’re seeing- instead we’re seeing a blanket policy of reducing speed limits and putting speed bumps everywhere, and timing traffic lights to cause maximum disruption, all with the aim of taking the glamour out of driving and instilling into society that driving should be purely about getting from A to B. The main underlying reasons for this are the philosophy that it is unacceptable to enjoy ourselves unless the associated risks are literally zero (on the basis "business and safety are essential but enjoyment is not") and also our culture of legislating for idiots- the same as why many people condemn the enjoyment of extreme weather, or want to see spiralling restrictions on things like fireworks, alcohol and horse racing. I despise this philosophy, especially when I see it being used to erode our freedoms via small, almost imperceptible measures.

    Now to address some misconceptions. Traffic restrictions only improve overall local quality of life significantly if they are selective (i.e. keeping traffic out of certain areas, like city centres and communal “home zones”), and only improve traffic flows in certain circumstances (e.g. part-time restrictions on busy routes at peak times). They should be applied selectively where appropriate, but not “wholesale”. It will not improve overall quality of life if we end up with towns crammed full of traffic doing 15-20mph, and cars restricted to 30-40mph around country lanes (consider slower bus journeys and cyclists being inconvenienced by speed bumps for example). It may well be safer, but let's look at it this way: many campaigners realise that it is worth benefitting the social and recreational aspects of walking and cycling even if it means a small increase in risk. Why not road transport too? I think that inconsistency stems, again, from the agenda of taking the glamour out of driving.

    Reducing speed limits does not make it harder to drive recklessly for fun; it makes it harder to enjoy driving while keeping within the speed limit (which is part of the idea; the further we go down this route, the easier it is to convince people that we need to outlaw enjoyment of driving to curb speeding- we really need to be vigilant in watching out for this sort of manipulation of public opinion).

    Reducing speed limits probably won't address the "people are always impatient and in a rush" problem; if anything longer journey times, and ever-decreasing ability to enjoy driving, may well make some people more impatient. If we make the general public slow down but maintain a high level of "in for a penny, in for a pound" type speeding then we will continue to see plenty of deaths regardless of how low the speed limits are. Hence many councils prefer to put loads of speed bumps down to legislate for this reckless minority, but this falls into the following trap: "a few idiots abuse A so we restrict A, then they move over to abusing B so we restrict B" and so on. Most people would never accept policies putting speed bumps on 100 roads, but fail to watch out for the "put humps on 1 road and slowly rinse and repeat for the other 99 roads" way of achieving the same result (there is a moral there about accepting the slow, almost imperceptible, erosion of our freedoms).

    The main problem with speed is inappropriate speed for the conditions, and “targeted” policies aiming to address this directly, plus a more graduated, training-oriented system for new drivers, will probably save a fair number of lives. What I would prefer to see is relatively lenient but strictly enforced speed restrictions, and greater enforcement of the “driving at inappropriate speed for the conditions” law. That's why I used to suggest more generous tolerances, but now that we've achieved relatively high compliance rates with existing speed limits, it may well be better to keep enforcing speed limits strictly but raise some of them. As long as we enforce the limits strictly and apply "driving too fast/slow for conditions" more often, I doubt that accidents will increase significantly if we raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph, raise some suburban routes from 30mph to 40mph, raise some 20mph zones (other than in designated traffic-restricted areas such as "home zones") back to 30mph, and raise some of the 40mph country lanes to 50mph.

    Regarding the rising cost of petrol, if it was combined with policies aiming to make our society less reliant on cars and petrol (particularly for business purposes), I would be in favour of it, as it is one tool that will certainly help push us towards more sustainable energy use. However, since we're doing very little of those, we're all suffering- it's mainly recreational trips and the tourist/leisure industries that are suffering, but businesses are also being hit by the fuel prices which they then transfer down to the customer. Ultimately, New Labour's emphasis on investing in "taking the glamour out of driving" has resulted in minimal investment in making us less dependent on petrol as a nation.

    Ultimately it is important to recognise that a journey is not just a means of getting from A to B, and that the ability to incorporate enjoyment en route does add a lot to people's overall quality of life, and I think you can say the same of life as a whole.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    I was in the Debating Society in first year at Lancaster University. Now, I certainly wouldn't be in favour of banning phones, but could someone come up with a set of convincing arguments for banning them? Here are some obvious arguments that I think could be used:
    Telephones are abused by people who send prank calls, harrass and stalk others. We need to do something about these prank calls; thus, in order to put a stop to the problem, we should ban phones; then nobody would be able to send prank calls and abuse them to harrass others.
    “But surely such a law would punish a lot of the wrong people, criminalising the general public?”
    The law is the law. Everyone would know what the law said; if everyone obeyed it there wouldn't be a problem.
    “But there would be a problem with the law; the punishment of the many because of the few!”
    The minority spoil it, that’s life, it can’t be helped because that’s just the way it is.
    “But it can be helped; you can try to differentiate the idiots from the responsible majority!”
    HOW???????? You can’t always tell if someone has made a prank call, therefore other methods are flawed, therefore they won’t work. We have to do something about prank phone calls, therefore we have to ban phones, end of story, a minority have made it necessary.
    Now I'd hope that most people wouldn't be convinced into supporting a ban on telephones by those arguments. Yet, consider what normally happens when a few idiots abuse something. Nine times out of ten, similar blanket bans/restrictions are adopted, and the arguments that are used in support of these measures are identical to the ones I have just presented in favour of a ban on phones.
    Such token measures rarely do stop the idiots, and when they do, the idiots usually move onto abusing other things. It strikes me that with this standard method of dealing with irresponsible behaviour, the only way we will ever make significant inroads against it is to carry out measures that substantially erode human liberties. I thus propose; we need to start considering alternative methods of tackling irresponsible behaviour...
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    Going off to Norwich in two days, and the apprehension increases; it's very much delving into the unknown. I don't know how much different doing a PhD will be to doing the research part of my MRes; hopefully the two will be quite similar, because if they are, it should be a very rewarding three years ahead.
    Some will remember that I had some friendship issues some years ago. Most people seem to follow an unwritten rule that all conflicts involving friendships are the friend's fault and that you need to "move on" by "cutting the friend out of your life". Although I didn't have many issues at Leeds University, one of the people on my course fell foul of this one, she had an unfortunate clash with someone else, and everyone assumed she was stringing the person along and cut her out. She was effectively a scapegoat.
    I believe that principle stems from the general idea "family matters, friendship is unimportant", as in family conflicts this principle never seems to apply. However, if a person follows it, it doesn't mean the person sees friendship as unimportant- as it's widely accepted without question, most people tend to follow it regardless of their other related beliefs. Whatever, it causes many innocent friends to become scapegoats.
    In recent weeks, I've got back in touch with quite a number of people I never thought I'd get back in touch with again. And, if I'd followed the above unwritten rule, chances are I'd have "cut most of them out of my life", rendering myself worse off in the long run. Yes, I know it's seen as "moving on" in the sense of moving from old friends to new friends, but I've never been keen on the idea that moving on means holding lifelong grudges against people, often for things they haven't done, and that letting go of said grudges is a sign of not having moved on! Another line of evidence for my argument perhaps.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    Since I didn't get my weather records in until after the April 2006 Summaries thread was closed for some reason, here's the April 2006 Summary.
    Mean Max 12.2C
    Mean Min 4.3C
    Mean Temp 8.3C
    Highest max: 16.7C (25th)
    Lowest max: 6.9C (4th)
    Highest min: 9.5C (25th)
    Lowest min: -1.8C (5th)
    Air frosts: 3
    Precipitation: 27mm
    There was sleet/snow on 3 days (sleet on the 7th and 9th, snow on the 8th) and four days with hail or graupel. Snow was lying at around 3pm on the 8th April, but there was nothing on the ground by 0900 the next morning.
    Overall the month had a rather cold first third with sunshine and wintry showers, then the remaining two-thirds were dry, consistently warm and notably sunny. There was a remarkably homogeneous nature about the warmth, with no maximum above 17C for the first time in April since 2001.
    The average maximum temperature was actually higher than for April 2005, but the average mean and minimum temperature were both the lowest since 2001. It was also the driest April (along with 2002) since 1997.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    I've stated recently that I'm not a big fan of the phrase, "rules are rules".

    Firstly, what does the phrase mean? It's often not entirely clear, but in general there are two main interpretations:

    Definition 1. "Rules must always be obeyed and infringements must always be punished"

    For example,
    [i]X is prohibited.[/i]
    [i]People who do X should therefore be punished for disobedience. If you allow people to get away with breaking rules you'll end up with anarchy.[/i]
    [i]If people want to have the prohibition on X removed, they should campaign to get the rules amended.[/i]

    One significant problem with the above is that when we campaign to get the rules amended, we often run up against the following "rules are rules" argument instead:

    Definition 2. "The rules should be the way they are because they're the way they are".

    For example,
    [i]X is prohibited.[/i]
    [i]People shouldn't do things that are prohibited.[/i]
    [i]Therefore, people shouldn't do X.[/i]
    [i]Therefore, X should be prohibited.[/i]
    [i]There is no good reason to relax the prohibition on X, because everyone knows what the rules say, and if everyone obeyed them, there wouldn't be a problem. If we relax the prohibition on X then we'll end up with anarchy as if you give people an inch they'll take a mile.[/i]

    Definition 2 amounts to a circular argument and is commonly used to prevent discussion on the correctness of a rule, the way it is interpreted and enforced, or whether or not it should have some discretionary flexibility.

    I am a particularly big opponent of Definition 2, but there are cases where I would support Definition 1. Rules are a [i]normative[/i] thing, where we set up codes of behaviour that are considered acceptable, but prohibit behaviour that we consider unacceptable. Up to a point, we do need such cast-iron rules to help discourage irresponsible behaviour, be it subjecting others to pain, gaining an unfair advantage in sporting competitions for example, and it is generally a bad idea in those situations to allow exceptions.

    However, because of the normative nature of rules, "rules are rules" is also a common argument for justifying ganging up against individuals or groups for being different (and is remarkably neglected in articles relating to bullying, racism and the like).

    A peer group can set up rules of conduct like, "be heterosexual or be ostracised", and then justify ostracising homosexuals on the basis, "their homosexuality violates our rules, the rules are the rules, and so homosexuals should be ostracised by us"- they see it as equivalent to, say, being fined for stealing from a shop. As far as the group is concerned, it doesn't matter what you or I think regarding homosexuality, what matters is that the group doesn't tolerate homosexuality, it sets up rules accordingly, and "rules are rules".

    Another point regards civil disobedience, in situations where people know that campaigning for the rules to be changed gets you nowhere. Was it right for the Jews to be executed by the Nazis for disobeying Nazi rules? An extreme case, but the point is clear.

    I won't deny that I am no stranger to what I consider "civil disobedience". This has often included, when being ostracised for being different to the norms of a peer group, refusing to change to fit in with their behaviour. It has also included disobeying rules that prohibit behaviour to legislate for a a minority who abuse it (as campaigning for change to such rules usually fails to get beyond the arguments "rules are rules" and "the majority have to spoil it for the majority"). The danger with attempting civil disobedience though is that you can inadvertently end up behaving irresponsibly, by recognising that a rule is over-restrictive but deviating from it too far.

    Overall, my objection to "rules are rules" is that morally speaking it only works (by definiton 1) if the rules are sound to begin with, and it is a way of preventing debate on the soundness of the rules.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    In most summer months, the east coast of Tyne & Wear is mostly thunderstorm and "sunshine and showers"-free, relative to much of the rest of the country. Not so in August 2005- this time Tyneside had quite a convective month while many other areas had a very benign month.
    The first week of the month was dominated mostly by sunny intervals and showers, with a couple of dull days thrown in there. Some quite dramatic convective storms too.
    The second week was also predominantly showery, and two days particularly stuck out: the 10th for its warmth and high humidity together with some torrential rainstorms, and the 13th for a thunderstorm, which passed just to the north of where I lived and brought some spectacular cloud formations.
    The third week contained a mix of dry sunny days and dull dry days, then the fourth week went back to being on the showery side, with the 25th sticking out as quite a convective day.
    My main memory of the month will be the Leeds thunderstorm on the 31st. A very hot sunny day was followed by some of the darkest clouds I have ever seen, lightning flashes at a rate of about five per minute at one time, and torrential rain- there was a fair amount of flooding. Interestingly, the Tyne & Wear region was reported to have been hit by a similar-intensity storm too, but for once, the fact that I wasn't there didn't matter.
    August 2005 scored 60% on my ranking system, a fairly solid score, and left Summer 2005 at an average of 59%- not a classic summer, but certainly one of the higher scoring summers of recent years.
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    Here was the August 2012 forecast:
    [quote]August will complete a full hat-trick of cool unsettled summer months, although the first third of the month will continue on from late July in the sense of offering more in the way of "summery" weather.

    A slow-moving low pressure area will continue to drift eastwards across the British Isles between the 2nd and 6th of the month, but the weather will be rather brighter and warmer than we've seen during most recent low pressure spells. Frontal activity will be limited and thus the emphasis will be on sunshine and showers. Many places will be mostly dry on the 3rd with just one or two showers, but showers will be heavy and thundery over a wide area of the country on the 4th and 5th. On the 6th the heavy thundery showers will be concentrated in eastern England while other regions will have well-scattered showers and more frequent sunshine. Temperatures, at 18-22C, will be about average for the time of year.

    Between the 7th and 10th August high pressure is expected to temporarily build from the south which will promise a brief dry sunny interlude, particularly for eastern and southern Britain. Ireland and western and northern Scotland will be prone to patches of cloud and light rain, but elsewhere it will be generally dry and sunny and the southern half of England will see highs between 25 and 28C. Around the 10th/11th, however, a new depression will head in off the North Atlantic and bring some rain with it, and as the fronts push against relatively warm continental air, thunderstorms are likely to break out over central and eastern parts of England.

    For the middle part of the month (12th-20th) our weather will be dominated by low pressure, with a dominant high pressure system in the mid-Atlantic increasingly sending cold northerly airstreams our way. The emphasis is likely to be on sunshine and showers with thunder and near-average temperatures until midmonth. Towards the 20th, however, we will most likely see an increased emphasis on frontal rain, extensive cloud cover and below-average daytime temperatures.

    The last third of the month is likely to see the high pressure in the mid-Atlantic ridge towards the British Isles and then flatten towards the Azores towards the month's end allowing westerlies in. Thus, between the 21st and 25th the weather may turn progressively more settled from the west, though rather cool with frequent northerly winds. South-western areas are most likely to experience long dry sunny periods, with northern and eastern areas most likely to be prone to cloud and cool daytime temperatures. Towards the month's end, as the westerlies set in, it will turn dull and wet in northern and western regions whereas eastern and southern England will have a brief interlude of warm dry sunny weather before unsettled westerlies establish at the end of the month.

    August 2012 will be another fairly cool summer month and I am predicting a Central England Temperature of 15.9C. Mean temperatures will generally be 0.5 to 1.0C below the 1981-2010 average in all regions, with the departure from normal slightly greater by day than by night.

    Rainfall in most regions will be 20-50% above normal, but locally totals will be swollen by thundery downpours in the first half. Generally speaking, central and eastern England will have the largest rainfall excesses while northern and eastern Scotland will have near average rainfall.

    Sunshine will come out 10-20% below normal in most regions, with sunshine likely to be a little above normal in the first half of the month, but below normal sunshine will resume in the second half. There will be some regional variation though; Wales and south-west England are most likely to have a significant shortage (around 20-30%) whereas Northern Ireland and parts of southern England and northern Scotland may have close to average sunshine for August as a whole.
    [/quote]

    [b]Synoptic pattern and UK weather[/b]
    I think I identified the pattern for the first third of the month very well, but didn't score so well on the patterns for the remaining two-thirds. For the middle third of August, the low pressure was centred further west than I expected, and consequently the weather was rather warmer (though still showery, bright in eastern areas, with occasional longer spells of rain).
    I had envisaged a brief ridge of high pressure from the west around the 21st-25th before westerlies came in towards the month's end, but instead the ridge didn't materialise and we went straight into a westerly type.

    [b]Temperature, sunshine and rainfall anomalies[/b]
    Judging by the stats over at Philip Eden's stats (Climate-uk) it appears that I got the sunshine anomalies spot-on. For rainfall anomalies, I got the UK-wide average close to right (as most regions were indeed 20-50% above average) but fell down on predicting the regional distribution, as central and eastern England actually ended up among the driest regions, not among the wettest as predicted. Temperatures were about 0.5-1.0C higher than I had predicted due to the southerlies in the middle third of the month, but the first and last third of the month were about as warm as predicted.
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, after an extremely hectic last week of term in Leeds University, I am back in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear for the Christmas holidays- but unfortunately coming down with a bit of a cold.
    Will be seeing quite a bit of the people I know from my junior school, one of whom has been my closest friend for over 10 years. Also have a bit of revision to do for exams in January.
    Having set up my professional weather station and, for the first time, having a thermometer which I know is accurate to within a couple of tenths of a degree Celsius, I am hoping that there will be a decent fall of snow in Cleadon- even if it happens while I'm in Leeds- in order to see what the "temperature profile" looks like, and whether snow does indeed settle readily at temperatures of up to 1C, or whether my past thermometers over-read a little. There might, just might, be a chance this Saturday. I'm not going to complain if it's a bog-standard 36 hour northerly with an inch of snow for Tyne & Wear if I happen to be here when it matters.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    The CASE period at the Met Office is up, so after a bit of an emotional last day, have now returned to UEA- and strangely am living in exactly the same place as before!

    However late next week features a chess tournament up at Leeds University which should also be interesting.

    As for the upcoming weather, next week looks like being my "cup of tea" with sun, showers and thunderstorms, although the longer-range outlook, towards next weekend, looks, er, "Pretty Awful" lol!
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    I think there is a lot wrong with the current generation of BBC weather forecasts, but it's no good just sitting whining non-constructively. Here's a list of changes that I would like to see in the forecasts:

    [b]Presentation/Format[/b]

    I suggest less emphasis on the current day's weather. Just a brief outline perhaps, briefly mentioning any significant events, then straight into the forecast. Also, we don't need that tour of Britain for 8am, it takes up valuable forecast time covering the country in micro-detail, and mainly just the south. People switch off because it takes ages for them to get the forecast for their area for the next day. I think they should just stick with showing the whole country at once.

    Synoptic analysis should be included, but should be integrated into the main body of the forecast rather than preceding it. This is because, contrary to the BBC's assertions, people switched off at the synoptic analysis mainly because it preceded forecasts and took ages to get into the forecast itself, not because they felt "disenfranchised". So to quote a simplistic example, instead of having a series of synoptic charts and then the forecast, we could have synoptic chart, forecast for day 1, synoptic chart for day 2, forecast for day 2 etc. That way people get the information, but it is spread out over the forecast and only occurs for brief periods at a time, so people don't switch off.

    [b]Subjectivity[/b]
    I suggest going back to the old tradition of simply presenting the information without bias, rather than introducing a lot of subjectivity. There is plenty of scope for non-subjective ways to make a forecast sound jolly and interesting, like "you might need a brolly", "scorching hot", "it'll feel nippy out there" etc.

    Presenting a lot of subjectivity not only annoys people who don't share the same set of weather type preferences as the presenter is suggesting, it also misleads people- this goes for both positive and negative spin. A forecast for sunshine and showers where "rainy unsettled awful weather" is emphasised will mislead people into thinking it's going to be mainly dull and wet. A forecast for dry mild cloudy windy weather where "staying fine and dry and mild" is emphasised will mislead people into thinking there might be a fair amount of sunshine and not much wind.
    The forecasters' job is to tell us what the weather is going to be, not to educate us as to what types of weather we should and shouldn't like. The rest of the media does enough of that already. And no, there isn't a set of weather type preferences that are shared by the vast majority. That's just the media trying to marginalise any opinions that differ from the opinions it thinks we should have.

    The Met Office, Philip Eden etc. are perfectly capable of keeping subjectivity to a minimum- why did the BBC stop?

    [b]Graphics[/b]

    I think most of the problem with the "new-style" graphics is the changes to the forecast presentations that they've brought in with them. The graphics themselves can be used to good effect, as the regional and Countryfile forecasts often demonstrate. Thus I'm not one of those who campaigns for the return of the old-style look- for me they're about six and two threes.

    I note that the BBC often says the current forecasts are the best because "research" shows that most people wanted the changes and find them very helpful. My question is, is this research representative or have they just done the usual tactic of wording a survey to get the answers they want from people? Judging by their defensiveness over this "research" I guess it's more likely to be the latter.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    I had a decent birthday yesterday, got lots of good wishes on Facebook, and got a few pressies, plus had cakes at 4pm.

    The temperature reached 27C during the afternoon at Norwich Airport- fitting since 27 is my favourite number. I like to have showers/storms with sunshine on my birthday most of all, but a warm/hot sunny dry day is my second preference so I'm not complaining about what I got.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    So today was my last day for a while at the Climatic Research Unit at UEA. It feels strange, as normally in this kind of situation I'm leaving a place potentially forever, but on this occasion it's only for six months, and then I'm back again for at least another year and a third (depending on when I get the PhD finished!)

    The intervening period, after the Christmas break in Geordieland, will be spent at the Met Office in Exeter. It will be quite a significant change in environment, so thoughts of both anticipation and apprehension reign. I have no regrets about choosing this tied studentship though- six months at the MetO will leave me with many important contacts and some good experience of working outside of the purely academic environment, plus as a meteorologist you can't really ask for a better company to provide this opportunity than the Met Office.

    However, be warned that I will have to be, er, quite tight lipped about certain things as the security is very high, so I'm told, because of the MetO still being part of the Ministry of Defence. Certainly the security clearance took a while.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    There seems to be a common process when changes are proposed or go ahead. Firstly, the masses tend to be resistant to change (whether for good or bad or in between) and mass OTT over-reactions break out. Then we get the proponents latching onto the few people who support the changes, while dismissing everyone else with comments like "get used to it, it's the future". And then, in the long run, everybody does "get used to it"- regardless of whether the change is for better, worse or in between.

    As with many such issues, we tend to end up with opposing positions at the two extremes. One is that change is usually good, people only resist it because they're naturally resistant to change. The other is the general resistance to change of any kind, amounting to "change is usually bad". And what we get precious little of is objective analysis of the pros and cons of the change, to determine whether it is or isn't a good thing.

    This scenario arose with the BBC weather graphics change in 2005, which ties in with my previous blog entry. But the current examples I'm primarily thinking of are the Facebook layout changes and the F1 points/wins change, both brought in without warning and at short notice. Personally, I don't agree with either of the changes, and on N-W, there has been a pretty good discussion on the latter. But a glance at the comments on messageboards like the BBC and Facebook reveals a bucketload of OTT nonsense, giving reasons for rejecting the changes that just smack of aimless whinging. The proponents will look at those and think, "oh, just resistance to change as usual"- and miss the good reasons for rejecting said changes.

    Maybe society could do with some education from a young age on how to carry out logical deductive reasoning in order to reach well-rounded opinions, and on how to have an open mind. The seemingly inept decision-making that prevails among politicians is echoed all too strongly in many "discussions" on topics on internet messageboards among the general public... it suffices to say that if I ever think Net-Weather has its problems with discussion quality, they pale by comparison with many other internet forums/messageboards.
  21. Thundery wintry showers

    Christmas

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    I may well be very fortunate with cold/snow over the coming week. The snowfalls from the easterly look like kicking in just after I get back to the North East, so hopefully no disruption to the train journey. And then the upcoming northerly looks like the sort of spell where it would definitely be better to be in Tyneside than in Norwich, as the warmer air will be further south. Could get a hefty spell of snow cover from this.

    It is uncertain how long this cold air will hang around for. Until around 27th/28th December would be most ideal as it would mean a white Christmas, and after a 10-day cold snowy spell I would most likely not be averse to a pattern change to warmer weather- especially if temporary, like the one near the end of December 1981.

    An interesting article on the death of the Christmas party:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8409155.stm

    Interesting because I've had a few Christmas dinners already! But the article makes a point that it cannot easily explain- and I can:
    [quote]He believes it's happened because the media suggests it is inappropriate for companies to throw parties, using terms like "squander".

    "There's a perception that spending on events like Christmas parties is somehow wasteful. The point I try to make to people is there's no such thing as good or bad spend, there's just spend in the economy from one part to another. I find this distinction bizarre," he says. [/quote]

    The distinction is quite simple actually. If it's pleasurable, it's deemed non-essential. If it's work-related, or a health and safety issue it's deemed essential. This is becuase of a perception that we all "need" to work and be healthy and safe in order to fund ourselves and make a living, but we don't "need" to enjoy ourselves. The fundamental flaw in this is that the whole point of making lots of money is so that we have a larger "pot" to tap into in order to raise overall quality of living. So if it's essential to have lots of money in order to fund this, why is it non-essential to enjoy ourselves even though the latter contributes even more directly to well-being than having lots of money does?

    I'm afraid the above is a significant factor in why we are having so-called "nanny state"-ism. If a minority abuse a work-related activity in a way that presents a risk to health and safety or money, since work is deemed essential, people look at the issue objectively and look for ways of addressing this abuse that do not curb this essential activity too much for it to be justified. But if the activity is pleasurable, it is deemed non-essential and thus curbing it altogether is considered justified even for the sake of negligible risk reduction. Arguments like "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" and "the minority have to spoil it for the majority" can then be trotted out whenever anyone complains.

    This is my biggest area of contention with the philosophy of free market capitalism- it's not the market freedom in itself, it's the tendency to measure attainment purely in financial terms and ignore social factors and we end up free [i]financially[/i], but not [i]socially[/i]. Somehow, we need to engineer some kind of "social capitalist" system that measures well-being in terms of the broad spectrum of socio-economic factors that contribute to it, rather than just money and health & safety.
  22. Thundery wintry showers

    Christmas

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    Well, it's coming up to the big day. Personally, I don't feel very "Christmassy" at the moment- it tends to be the case that I need there to be snow events shortly before Christmas in order to get me into the "Christmas spirit".
    My house is currently a construction site because of a new extension that is being built into the back garden, making things a little awkward, although it should be worth it come next summer when our garden will be more conducive to sitting outside.
    I will be meeting up with some of my old friends from junior school on Christmas Eve- most likely going to the local pub, and getting up to all kinds of daft stuff. However, as per usual, I plan to drink alcohol in moderation (if at all) and will hence not be hung over on Christmas Day- the last time I was hung over was back in October 2001! It will be interesting also to see what I get on Christmas Day.
    Christmas Day will see my grandparents come over, and then there will be a large gathering of immediate family members (uncles, siblings etc) for Boxing Day tea, which usually provides the opportunity to see various cousins, aunties and uncles that I see, on average, a few times per year. Last year's meeting went exceptionally well so I have high hopes for this year's as well.
    However, my immediate family aren't very "commitment intensive", nor do they buy into the "Christmas is family time, so you can't see your friends" malarky, and thankfully, nor do the immediate families of the friends that I currently hang out with these days. Thus, the traditional problem of my friends being unable to meet up with me because their families won't let them is unlikely to arise this year, which is another positive in my book.
    Perhaps most interesting of all, for me, is the possibility of an easterly around the 27th-29th December. It is by no means set in stone, but if it was to come off, it would represent my first experience of a "sunshine-and-snow-showers" easterly in the North East since 31 December 1996.
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, this was something of a surprise- my biggest snowfall since 22 December 2003, looking likely to be the longest lasting since the New Year period of 2001/02, and easily beating anything I saw in Lancaster.
    I was getting concerned when I woke up at 6 am. on Wednesday morning and saw no lying snow. I had forecast that the snow would probably settle on Wednesday, and up to that point, we had been warmed too much by the sea, and had had mainly hail and sleet showers. That had been in line with my prediction, but of course the settling snow was the most important compartment of my prediction, and there would be some disappointed faces if I got that bit wrong. But then, at 8:30am, suddenly, there was lying snow. I took way too many photographs of the "beast from the east" for my own good, and a handful of them may well crop up on the site after the breakdown tomorrow.
    Unfortunately we threw away the sledge recently, but plan to go out to Cleadon Hills today and do everything but sledge instead.
    As for Christmas itself, it was quite good. I got a gamepad, and a Monty Python DVD set from the series, and various other things. The Boxing Day tea was massive- so much so that we have spent the next two days finishing off the leftovers!
    On a N-W theme, I received a copy of Philip Eden's latest book, which didn't surprise me as people generally know of the high level of respect I have for him. A good read, and I particularly liked the strong comments about extremists at both ends of the pro and anti GW spectrum at the end- very much in line with my own views on the topic. It was also interesting to see his account of the August 2003 heatwave in France, given that I was also there at the time. I remember going out into the heat for 20 minute bursts, feeling ill and coming back in again, and spent most of the last few days of that holiday in the bath. In a way I am pleased I had the experience, so that I can brag about how I lived to tell the tale and know what 40C+ feels like, but I certainly wouldn't want to experience it again.
    And, unbelievably, there was more snow here in Cleadon than there was in Leeds. Yes, Sod's Law has finally failed to come up trumps.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    I didn't get my weather records until today, so no post in the October stats thread.

    In any case, Cleadon's stats for October 2008, with deviation from estimated 1971-2000 averages:

    Mean Max: 13.3 (+0.2)
    Mean Min: 6.0 (-1.0)
    Mean Temp: 9.6 (-0.5)

    Highest max: 18.8 (10th)
    Lowest max: 6.1 (28th)

    Highest min: 11.6 (20th)
    Lowest min: -1.6 (30th)

    Air frosts: 2

    Days of thunder: 0
    Days of sleet or snow: 0
    Days of fog: 0
    Days of hail: 3

    Precipitation 32mm (57%)


    This was a dry sunny month- and the first dry month since May! There was a notable cold snap near the beginning of the month, with a max of just 10.3C on the 3rd, and a minimum of 1.6C on the 4th, while the weather was mostly dry with sunshine. The second week was warm with variable cloud cover, then a fairly mixed third week followed with near-average temperatures.

    The cold snap at the end of the month produced the lowest October maximum temperature in records going back to 1993- no previous October day has failed to reach 7C. Although the area missed out on the snowfalls that many other areas had on the 28th and 29th, some dramatic showers overnight 30th/31st produced large hail and a temporary covering of hail- much of this lasted through to dawn on the 31st from about the Tyne Tunnel westwards, but it melted at the coastal strip due to higher temperatures.

    Like in the 8/9 November 2001 cold snap I often refer to as a benchmark for dramatic weather in Cleadon, temperatures were all over the place. They would stabilise at 6-7C in clear intervals, but fell abruptly during hail showers, falling as low as 3.3C at one point.

    Shame I was down in Norwich and missed it all! But then again Norwich was by far the thunderiest place in the country in August, so you can't win 'em all I suppose!

    Edit on 16 November: it is also highly likely to have been the sunniest October since 2003, in common with much of the rest of the country.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    I wonder where I would appear in a typical assessment of "climate change believer" vs "climate sceptic". I certainly appear more towards the "believer" end in the climate change discussion threads, but on the other hand I remain sceptical about the ability of computer models to predict the future (they have improved a lot in recent years and will probably continue to get better, but even so, there are all kinds of areas where they could go wrong).

    As per usual, while most of those with strong opinions on the subject take up one side or the other, I've formed a strong opinion that is somewhere in the middle, though perhaps further from the "sceptic" end than the "believer" end.

    It's rather odd, though, how the definition of "sceptic" seems to have migrated away from its dictionary definition, which is merely someone who is sceptical. By this measure, given the first paragraph, I would actually classify as a "sceptic", and some of those with anti-AGW positions would be better categorised as "disbelievers". I prefer that term to "deniers" which has a strong jibing element to it.
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