Monthly outlooks that didn't go according to plan

[Weather-history]

Here's 3 monthly outlooks that didn't quite go according to prediction

June 1976

January 1979

February 1980

[ANYWEATHER]

Good to see somethings dont change! thanks for the info, just goes to show that lrf are not a lot better now then they were then! :lol:

[Weather-history]

They didn't see how mild December 1974 would turn out.

[johnholmes]

those were the days, monthly outlooks, I spent more time at Manchester Weather centre trying to explain their inaccuracies than anything else!

I also knew two people in that department including the driving force behind it; he believed the answers lay in the 300mb charts!

Edited November 27, 2007 by johnholmes

[Thundery wintry showers]

Ah, monthly outlooks- I'm quite familiar with those! Perhaps my most spectacular failure was April 2007, when I went for a month of near to slightly above average temperature, and the month produced record temperatures.

I vividly recall my predictions for January 2006 and February 2007, both of which went for a very cold north-easterly incursion starting around the 20th in association with a build of pressure from the N and NE. Those examples show that it isn't enough to get the general synoptics right- both of the cold spells I predicted came very close to coming off, but the easterlies never made it as far west as Britain and so the remainder of those forecasts were completely wrong.

I don't know what the monthly LRFs were like at the beginning of February 1998, but I remember most of the TV forecasts going for a very wintry start to the month with persistent high pressure to the NW and frequent northerly winds. If anyone had predicted a severe February that year, they were hugely mistaken!