Tough call forecasting, Met Office fail

Site close to storm damage area, southerly gale

From press release Met Office warns of storms around Christmas

23 December 2013 – Met Office forecasters are expecting a stormy start and end to Christmas week. However, there will be a calmer, colder spell for Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

The only expectation was

This storm brings the potential for disruption to transport.

23/24th December the storm broke electricity feeds to initially perhaps 50,000 in southern Home Counties not far from London and still many thousands will remain broken through 26th, in addition there is serious flooding.

BBC: Storms leave homes without power ‘until at least Boxing Day

Disruption to transport, sure, define please.

Month or so ago there was an overreaction, this time underreaction.

I think this boils down to GCM as they are, choose any version, work in the short term but are still woefully inadequate at local scale, possibly not helped by poor input data and records. The Met Office is notorious for incorrect local forecasting. That needs skilled people at local level, no longer exist.

What went wrong?

Two factors

First and the lesser, there was a massive frontal system bringing a very long period of rain, around 18 hours solid.

Chilbolton Observatory is not far away, top, then finishes bottom one.

No surprise two minor rivers overflowed. Much the same here but we mostly survived.

Second and the more critical

This was large weather system passing to the north of the UK. Head plot shows this was just about an inland gale (old style >=40mph for one hour), unusual but I think the killer feature is the direction, wind from the south, whereas most blows are from the west or south-west. The area affected is less than 50 miles from the south coast.

We have had this before, southern gales bring damage. Trees / electricity cables could not take it.

For wind more attention needs to be paid to wind direction, how it affects a region and any expected wind shifts. One Met Office site elsewhere in the country was showing the wind 90 degrees from the rest, local topography.

IMO a return to the old tried and tested as still used for marine, describe the general situation and then roughly what is expected. Trying to issue warnings is not working well enough. I think more responsibility has to be passed back to the people, wise up. Give the information, too difficult in a dumbed down world, really? Darwin might speak. Well maybe not.

Shifting some bottoms out of Exeter, away from computer modelling of climate would not go amiss, different skills though. Traditionally connected with the military. This might also start to address the longstanding complaints from pilots about a lack of staff who know about weather in localities.

Post by Tim