The Way I see it...By Eric Baxter
Published 23 Jan 2012 10:45
Met Office must learn from their mistakes
WITH all the amazing technology now available, you would imagine the Met Office would be spot-on with their weather forecasts.
Tell that to the unsuspecting people of Inverclyde who woke up last Tuesday to the most horrendous conditions experienced in a generation.
The TV forecast the night before indicated the worst of it would be in the south-east of England, which, I thought, was fair enough as long as it wasn't on the west coast of Scotland.
We had already endured more than our fair share of disruption in recent weeks, so it didn't seem possible that another storm was about to batter us, let alone one far more serious than the others which had been well publicised in advance.
The Met Office, however, were caught off their guard.
We had all been listening to roaring winds for hours before they issued a red alert after 8am.
Weather prediction is never going to be an exact science, but, even so, it's surely reasonable to expect
they can tell where and when winds of more than 90mph are going to strike.
Even on normal days you can listen to weather forecasts on the radio and be no more the wiser.
Forecasters often seem to contradict their own predictions.
Let's hope they get their act together before the next tumultuous event, for we're told there could be more of the same until late February.
Can't wait.
This article appeared in Greenock Telegraph 11 Jan 12
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