Ken Ring

Gene Derm

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

There are in fact a lot of long-range forecasts being made. Also it's not just a Ken Ring vs traditional meteorology paradigm any more, there are literally dozens of people producing regular long-range forecasts, many of them with some overlap in techniques, but taken as a group, covering a wide range of methods.
Our 2009 winner, Danno, seems to have a knack for making accurate long-range forecasts, perhaps we should ask him what his methodology is. He was quite often within one degree of the correct monthly mean, and some of the other contestants were almost as reliable. It's quite possible that Ken Ring is as far along the trail to this goal as anyone who's actively working in the field.

Anyone working in the longrange field has to have a system that is not based on satellite photos taken of the tops of clouds, which is the domain of short-term traditional forecasting. When looking at a 12-month trend, a photo of today's sky from a mile or so up is of no use whatsoever. Neither will past averages, which are moving beasts, tell you much about next year. So the longrange forecaster will always be at odds with traditional meteorology, and it is the mainstream guys like the mets on this forum that put up all the resistance to something new. They needn't worry because we are not after their jobs.
Piers Corbyn is another who attracts an immense amount of flak for being different. But he gets results. Isn't that the most important thing??
As for verification, I would say let the public decide. If my custom dropped off, and it would fairly smartly if my method did not deliver frequently enough for farmers, then I would rapidly take up something else. I do have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
But I find the reverse is happening. The agricultural sector are my support, in three countries, NZ, Australia and Ireland. Yet as a group one could not find any more skeptical than farmers. They all call a spade a spade. They are all too busy to use systems that don't work for them. To my mind farmers are the only people who know anything about weather.
I enjoy the chitchat on this forum, but I care not for the endless calls to justify myself, because my clientele are probably elsewhere. At the risk of sounding uppity, I don't think I would have the time for an extensive analysis of my own results. In fact I know exactly where my system breaks down and why, but as I receive no funding and no co-operation from metservices I can't address it. Yet with only an aging PC, a compass and a ruler I seem to have scored where Met Eireann with all their millions of annual pounds seemingly could not, for the Ireland 2009 summer forecast. If I had the mets' resources I could put research teams onto things, which I cannot do now, and I think I could get my accuracy rate into the 90s. I suggest the same goes for any other longrange people. What you seem to be asking, MTC, is that we acceed to the demands of the mets and provide data, analyses and methodology that they can utilise. In other words we should come to their aid. Well, with respect, in an ideal world I would agree - that would be admirable. But commercially in the current world that would be suicide for us. Already the metservices and NIWA (the national climate office) in NZ wait till my almanacs hit the bookshelves in October and then parrot me with their predictions for the approaching summer, gaining media attention, yet all the while claiming they cannot predict more than 4-5 days ahead. Moreover my access log tells me that they visit my website about every 10 days and have done so for the past deade.
So at present as I see it, perhaps it should be the other way around. We longrangers (and you cite Danno) now seem to have the better track record and the mets do not. So perhaps it is time for longrange forecasters to be considered part of the meteorological mainstream.
Meantime, I shall look out for flying pigs..
Ken Ring

boardswalker

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Why the difference?
I was speaking about short term weather forecasting in one, and long term forecasting in the other. Can't see where you see where there is double standards, since both of the posts quoted are acknowledging the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the Irish climate.

Try again. .

Ok, I’ll try again.

WolfIre predicted snow yesterday, got it wrong and apologized.
You posted “this is weather forecasting in Ireland, it is never going to be an exact science”

Ken Ring posted “I claim about 80-85% accuracy. That means I'm possibly going to be out by about two and a half months in a year. It's the trend that I'm more interested in.”

You posted “Being out by 2.5 months within a year is not really good enough in my opinion.”

So getting it wrong (snow/no snow) in one scenario is acceptable and in the other 85% accuracy is not really good enough.

The thing is that you seem to be interpreting “I am going to be out by about two and a half months in a year” as involving time shifting. I take it to mean that he’ll be reasonably reliable for 9.5 months and unreliable for 2.5 months – not involving time shifting at all. A simple right or wrong for each month and then adding up the number of right months and expressing the answer as a percentage.

I think some people here don't understand, and maybe don't want to understand, the difference between long range forecasting and short range forecasting.

With long range you are looking for trends – it's much more general. As you get closer the emphasis becomes more on the specifics.

For example, in a previous job I worked as a planner – updating 3-5 year plans once per year and updating quarterly forecasts 4 times a year.

The long range plans were used to identify trends int the industry that would affect the business - computers will be smaller, more powerful, we’ll have to sell more units to make the same revenue, we’ll need less direct labour, there’ll be more automation etc. Decisions were made on those forecasts about the type of machinery to start buying (which had long purchasing lead times) and the mix of labour (we did not want to have permanent staff if there was not work for them.) Nobody was pinning us down for profit forecasts or saying you said we’d make 12 million and we only made 9.6 million or saying you said we'd need 400 employees and we only needed 360.

With the quarterly forecasts however we were looking by month at the next four quarters. People were looking at the profit and would hold us to that. We would be allowed to fine-tune each quarter as it came closer they would expect us to be on the ball for the next quarter and if there were changes to that, they would need to be totally out of our control or otherwise we'd get crucified.

Looking at it like that, you can understand why farmers, whose business has a year long cycle, need at least some type of year long forecasting – what crops to sow, when will be best harvesting times etc.

You look at different indicators (success criteria) when judging whether a short range forecast is succesful as you would when when judging whether a long range forecast is successful - because they're usually done for different purposes. I think that on this forum people are using short range criteria to judge long range forecasts.

If I had been posting my long range forecasts here I'd get hammered for having the wrong profits for each month etc. But that wasn't what people were looking for from the forecast - they wanted the trends etc.

Another way of looking at it, is to assume that you can only buy your clothes once per year. If you think next summer will be very warm you’ll buy more of the light summery clothes. If you’re wrong then you’ll go cold and maybe wet.

Once summer comes then, each night you’ll look at the forecast for next day and make a decision for tomorrow based on the forecast, maybe saying tomorrow will be good, lets take off work and go to the beach. Now if your clothes were bought using the long-range forecast you may or may not have beach clothes to hand, depending on what the long range predicted.

The two forecasting types are complementary rather than adversarial.

Long range and short range forecasting practitioners should be working together, not knocking lumps off each other.

If we had better long range forecasting, we might have had more stockpiles of grit. Assuming we could afford to buy and hold it, a different question entirely. We need better long range forecasting - from someone. And we need people who are not going to be afraid to try, not afraid to get it wrong - but capable of learning from the process and getting better at it over time.

Otherwise this type of failure to prepare and cope with weather will keep happening.

nacho libre

boardswalker wrote: »

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Another way of looking at it, is to assume that you can only buy your clothes once per year. If you think next summer will be very warm you’ll buy more of the light summery clothes. If you’re wrong then you’ll go cold and maybe wet.

Once summer comes then, each night you’ll look at the forecast for next day and make a decision for tomorrow based on the forecast, maybe saying tomorrow will be good, lets take off work and go to the beach. Now if your clothes were bought using the long-range forecast you may or may not have beach clothes to hand, depending on what the long range predicted.

.

In that case rather than having to spend money on another set of clothes, would it not be better to have been able to pick the right clothes based on the long range forecast?

i think given there are recurring patterns in our weather it's quite likely a long range forecaster will be right a lot of the time but to be able to pin point with consistency exactly when will we have specific types of weather is what would make a long range forecaster stand out from another to me. With that in mind Ken Ring got the summer forecast spot on but he didn't forecast this very cold spell or the exceptionally wet november.

others won't agree, but if over a four - five period Ken Ring had an 80-85 percent accuracy rate of exactly when certain type of weather would occur then it would be harder to discredit his methods.
with this in mind it will be interesting to see how it goes for him in 2010. no pressure Ken;)

Gene Derm

boardswalker wrote: »

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Ok, I’ll try again.

WolfIre predicted snow yesterday, got it wrong and apologized.
You posted “this is weather forecasting in Ireland, it is never going to be an exact science”

Ken Ring posted “I claim about 80-85% accuracy. That means I'm possibly going to be out by about two and a half months in a year. It's the trend that I'm more interested in.”

You posted “Being out by 2.5 months within a year is not really good enough in my opinion.”

So getting it wrong in one scenario is acceptable and in the other is not really good enough.

The thing is that you seem to be interpreting “I am going to be out by about two and a half months in a year” as involving time shifting. I take it to mean that he’ll be reasonably reliable for 9.5 months and unreliable for 2.5 months – not involving time shifting at all. A simple right or wrong for each month and then adding up the number of right months and expressing the answer as a percentage.
.

Yes, that's right. I'm not saying I guarantee to be right from January to halfay through October and then I'm going to be wrong, I'm saying all my forecasts have a certain leeway. The NZ and Australian metservices give themselves only 80%, and that's over a day or so. In NZ the Metservice is fond of saying, at every public opportunity, that weather is 80% pattern and 20% chaos. That view seems to be shared by other western metservices around the world, as they all derived from the British Meteorological Society that was established halfway through the 1800s. When I once asked which 20% was chaos, I was told there was a lot of uncertainty. When I asked how much uncertainty I was told 100%. So I still don't know their thinking on that. I think my 80-85% is probably a parallel figure to all other metservices, given the inexactness of the science. I'm sure it's not a difficult concept to understand.
Ken Ring

Gene Derm

nacho libre wrote: »

With that in mind Ken Ring got the summer forecast spot on but he didn't forecast this very cold spell or the exceptionally wet november.

others won't agree, but if over a four - five period Ken Ring had an 80-85 percent accuracy rate of exactly when certain type of weather would occur then it would be harder to discredit his methods.
with this in mind it will be interesting to see how it goes for him in 2010. no pressure Ken;)

Well, I did say a cold winter, during the year, when the others said it would be a mild one. But no, I didn't put the word 'very' alongside it. And I think I did get the heavy November rain. I told radio stations of some significant falls that might cause flooding. My November Ireland rain distribution maps, posted at the end of October, showed expected heavy rain between 8th-13th, 16th-18th, 20th-23rd and 27th-28th. As to 2010, the Irish Farmers Journal is printing a short summary that I have sent through, in their next issue, entitled Why the cold? Obviously I shall not steal their thunder before it appears.
But I admit I did not expect cold of this severity, only because I overlooked a big cold-engine factor that I describe in the article.
Ken

boardswalker

Hi Ken,
you might correct the quotes there.
Thats not a quote from me.
It was actually Nacho Libre who said it.

If you can go back and edit your posts, I think you will find you start with two quotes.
Just delete the irrelevant one.
Thanks

boardswalker

nacho libre wrote: »

In that case rather than having to spend money on another set of clothes, would it not be better to have been able to pick the right clothes based on the long range forecast?

Exactly. That's the point. You thought it was going to be warm based on someones long range forecast. It would be better to have a reliable forecast.
A five day forecast is not helpful in that, purely hypothetical, scenario.

We need better long range forecasting.

octo

Gene Derm wrote: »

I told radio stations of some significant falls that might cause flooding.

Funny, I heard you tell Rachel English the rain would be "on and off, on and off". Does that translate as heavy rain in New Zealand?

Deep Easterly

boardswalker wrote: »

Ok, I’ll try again.

WolfIre predicted snow yesterday, got it wrong and apologized.
You posted “this is weather forecasting in Ireland, it is never going to be an exact science”

Ken Ring posted “I claim about 80-85% accuracy. That means I'm possibly going to be out by about two and a half months in a year. It's the trend that I'm more interested in.”

You posted “Being out by 2.5 months within a year is not really good enough in my opinion.”

So getting it wrong (snow/no snow) in one scenario is acceptable and in the other 85% accuracy is not really good enough.

The thing is that you seem to be interpreting “I am going to be out by about two and a half months in a year” as involving time shifting. I take it to mean that he’ll be reasonably reliable for 9.5 months and unreliable for 2.5 months – not involving time shifting at all. A simple right or wrong for each month and then adding up the number of right months and expressing the answer as a percentage.

I think some people here don't understand, and maybe don't want to understand, the difference between long range forecasting and short range forecasting.

With long range you are looking for trends – it's much more general. As you get closer the emphasis becomes more on the specifics.

For example, in a previous job I worked as a planner – updating 3-5 year plans once per year and updating quarterly forecasts 4 times a year.

The long range plans were used to identify trends int the industry that would affect the business - computers will be smaller, more powerful, we’ll have to sell more units to make the same revenue, we’ll need less direct labour, there’ll be more automation etc. Decisions were made on those forecasts about the type of machinery to start buying (which had long purchasing lead times) and the mix of labour (we did not want to have permanent staff if there was not work for them.) Nobody was pinning us down for profit forecasts or saying you said we’d make 12 million and we only made 9.6 million or saying you said we'd need 400 employees and we only needed 360.

With the quarterly forecasts however we were looking by month at the next four quarters. People were looking at the profit and would hold us to that. We would be allowed to fine-tune each quarter as it came closer they would expect us to be on the ball for the next quarter and if there were changes to that, they would need to be totally out of our control or otherwise we'd get crucified.

Looking at it like that, you can understand why farmers, whose business has a year long cycle, need at least some type of year long forecasting – what crops to sow, when will be best harvesting times etc.

You look at different indicators (success criteria) when judging whether a short range forecast is succesful as you would when when judging whether a long range forecast is successful - because they're usually done for different purposes. I think that on this forum people are using short range criteria to judge long range forecasts.

If I had been posting my long range forecasts here I'd get hammered for having the wrong profits for each month etc. But that wasn't what people were looking for from the forecast - they wanted the trends etc.

Another way of looking at it, is to assume that you can only buy your clothes once per year. If you think next summer will be very warm you’ll buy more of the light summery clothes. If you’re wrong then you’ll go cold and maybe wet.

Once summer comes then, each night you’ll look at the forecast for next day and make a decision for tomorrow based on the forecast, maybe saying tomorrow will be good, lets take off work and go to the beach. Now if your clothes were bought using the long-range forecast you may or may not have beach clothes to hand, depending on what the long range predicted.

The two forecasting types are complementary rather than adversarial.

Long range and short range forecasting practitioners should be working together, not knocking lumps off each other.

If we had better long range forecasting, we might have had more stockpiles of grit. Assuming we could afford to buy and hold it, a different question entirely. We need better long range forecasting - from someone. And we need people who are not going to be afraid to try, not afraid to get it wrong - but capable of learning from the process and getting better at it over time.

Otherwise this type of failure to prepare and cope with weather will keep happening.

I hear what you are saying, but my response to Wolfe was a totally different kettle of fish. He focused on a potentially serious situation that developed yesterday morning, considered (very well and in much considered detail )hi res model outlooks along with his own direct experience of the climate of Ireland and when it did not come out as planned, he apologized. No need I said, it happens to the best of us.

However, Ken Ring's forecasts are not the same thing. They are vague and open to much interpretation, so even when they are wrong, they will be right simply due to the wide margin of errors he gives them. I just can't get why some don't seem to grasp this. I like to think that I have a little knowledge of how the climate system works in Ireland, but it will always surprise me, yet not. It is unpredictable, but so unpredictable as to be predictable. Tell a farmer we might have a wet or dry spell during the havest next year and I am pretty sure he or she would say, "well that's nothing new". The forecasts Ken Ring gives could be given by my next door neighbour, my 2nd cousin twice removed or whoever. Except that they don't charge.

boardswalker

Deep Easterly wrote: »

However, Ken Ring's forecasts are not the same thing. They are vague and open to much interpretation, so even when they are wrong, they will be right simply due to the wide margin of errors he gives them. I just can't get why some don't seem to grasp this. I like to think that I have a little knowledge of how the climate system works in Ireland, but it will always surprise me, yet not. It is unpredictable, but so unpredictable as to be predictable. Tell a farmer we might have a wet or dry spell during the havest next year and I am pretty sure he or she would say, "well that's nothing new". The forecasts Ken Ring gives could be given by my next door neighbour, my 2nd cousin twice removed or whoever. Except that they don't charge.

W. Edwards Deming said it best.
"Without facts, everyone is an expert" or put another way "In God we trust, all others bring data".

Pardon me for being underwhelmed by your evidence.

"Our weather is unpredictably predictable". "It will always surprise me, yet not."

Thank You. Your post surprised me, yet not.

Gene Derm

boardswalker wrote: »

Hi Ken,
you might correct the quotes there.
Thats not a quote from me.
It was actually Nacho Libre who said it.

If you can go back and edit your posts, I think you will find you start with two quotes.
Just delete the irrelevant one.
Thanks

Apologies, I will try to be more careful, cheers.

Gene Derm

Deep Easterly wrote: »

The forecasts Ken Ring gives could be given by my next door neighbour, my 2nd cousin twice removed or whoever. Except that they don't charge.

Then in the spirit of consistency, I'm interested in what your job is and whether you work for nothing, and if not then why not. Seriously.

Ogham

I haven't read all of this thread - but I have heard Ken Ring a few times in the last couple of years on the radio and have kept an eye on his website to see what he was predicting.
I noticed that just today/yesterday he has updated his forecast for this winter in Ireland on his website - to make it look like he didn't get it as wrong

The page is still dated as if it was written in Sept 09 - but the details for Winter - especially the period around Dec/jan have been altered to make it look better. I think these kind of changes will not do Ken Rings reputation much good . I certainly won't be paying much attention to him in future.

The page is https://www.predictweather.co.nz/assets/articles/article_home.php?id=68
The changes I have spotted are these:

The paragraph headed Winter Report used to say

WINTER REPORT
Overall
The country is looking at an average-to-slightly-warmer winter, then an average-to-cooler spring. In terms of sunshine, an overall cloudier winter and spring, followed by a sunnier-than-average summer and autumn. In January and February the wettest areas in the country may be in parts of Northern Ireland. January should be more cloudy-than-average except in some southern regions, but February should be an average month for sunshine amounts.

Now it has been altered to say this

WINTER REPORT
Overall
2009/10 would have been about the middle point of the run of milder winter years for Ireland, had the new sunspot cycle kicked in when expected. However the delay in Cycle #24 kicking in has seen cooler winters arrive all around the globe. A white Xmas? Most snow not until later in December and then through January, drying after 19th and temperatures rising in second and third week of February

.

Also - the following paragraph has been deleted completely!

Snow
Chances of snow in Tipperary are in the last few days of November, fourth weeks in January and February, the first week in March, and the second week in April. However, there is about a 4degC minimum difference between Tipperary and Northern Ireland, so the north will be affected more. Some northern parts may get some significant falls about the second and last weeks in Nov, and in December, snow in the north in the last few days. Then first and fourth weeks in both Feb and March, and the north may even get snow as late as the first week in May in some places

No mention of these changes have been made - and the page still looks like it was written on 29th Sept 2009. :mad:

I used a handy tool in Firefox that tracks changes to webpages -
http://updatescanner.mozdev.org/

Gene Derm

Ogham wrote: »

I haven't read all of this thread - but I have heard Ken Ring a few times in the last couple of years on the radio and have kept an eye on his website to see what he was predicting.
I noticed that just today/yesterday he has updated his forecast for this winter in Ireland on his website - to make it look like he didn't get it as wrong

The page is still dated as if it was written in Sept 09 - but the details for Winter - especially the period around Dec/jan have been altered to make it look better. I think these kind of changes will not do Ken Rings reputation much good . I certainly won't be paying much attention to him in future.

The page is https://www.predictweather.co.nz/assets/articles/article_home.php?id=68
The changes I have spotted are these:

The paragraph headed Winter Report used to say



Now it has been altered to say this

.

Also - the following paragraph has been deleted completely!



No mention of these changes have been made - and the page still looks like it was written on 29th Sept 2009. :mad:

I used a handy tool in Firefox that tracks changes to webpages -
http://updatescanner.mozdev.org/

Yes, very sorry if you felt deceived, this can easily be explained. I have to arrange the dates so the pages appear on my website in a particular order. It doesn't mean that's that's when I write them. I overlooked that when I updated, so my mistake there. I have since added ("updated 11 Jan") to that winter report in case others have that same confusion. In fact I wasn't too far out in forecasting the timing of the weather events, just the intensity.
Be assured that I have no intention to mislead, but I do reserve the right to update my pages frequently.
I'm actually glad you read my posts so carefully. I hope you are as diligent picking up on Met Eireann's errors in the same vein, and writing to them in the same detail. You wouldn't want to be seen as biased (g)
Ken Ring

snow ghost

I keep an open mind about long term forecasting like Gene/Ken’s, and until I objectively review his forecasts I couldn’t say one way or another my conclusion as to his effectiveness.

At the same time I will say I understand that when paradigms – in this case modern weather forecasting – are challenged there is usually great resistance, as people reject what they do not understand, for an example, see Galileo.

In many ways those who challenge the accepted ways of doing things, and are often ridiculed for doing so, make the greatest advances in human knowledge.

Equally, I also appreciate that weather forecasting is so unpredictable that it lends itself very well to abuse by charlatans who essential indulge in specious ‘weather clairvoyancy’ for their own gain. In that respect it is healthy to be sceptical of those putting themselves on a pedestal as purveyors of the meteorological future.

In the mean time I think Gene / Ken should be given the benefit of the doubt and his forecasts promulgated here reviewed and then people can make up their own mind.

In that respect we can see for ourselves very shortly as Gene/Ken recently made this forecast last Saturday 9th January on another thread:

“We expect the cold to peak at the end of this month when the Earth-Moon distance is the shortest for the year, after which the extreme cold should start to abate.”

He elaborated on this by stating:

“This month coming up I am saying there should be overnight snow around this month's New Moon then precipitation will dwindle to almost nothing, with a dry spell beginning on or near the 19th, although still staying cold. Around the end of the month will be the turning point. Snow may return in the first week of February but by the second and third weeks warmth and thawing should set in.”

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055792875

I’d interpret that as the extreme cold we had on Saturday will get even worse by the end of this month… “cold to peak” in Gene/Ken’s words. So it should be even colder than last weeks lows … -10’s & 12’s etc… at the end of Jan.

And the New Moon is, I believe, on Friday 15th Jan, so we should have overnight snow Thursday night, Friday night or Saturday Night then it will be very dry (“snow around this month's New Moon then precipitation will dwindle to almost nothing”)

So we can all soon see for ourselves.

A part of me hopes Gene/Ken is right and I wish him all the best with his predictions.

Gene Derm

snow ghost wrote: »

I keep an open mind about long term forecasting like Gene/Ken’s, and until I objectively review his forecasts I couldn’t say one way or another my conclusion as to his effectiveness.

At the same time I will say I understand that when paradigms – in this case modern weather forecasting – are challenged there is usually great resistance, as people reject what they do not understand, for an example, see Galileo.

In many ways those who challenge the accepted ways of doing things, and are often ridiculed for doing so, make the greatest advances in human knowledge.

Equally, I also appreciate that weather forecasting is so unpredictable that it lends itself very well to abuse by charlatans who essential indulge in specious ‘weather clairvoyancy’ for their own gain. In that respect it is healthy to be sceptical of those putting themselves on a pedestal as purveyors of the meteorological future.

In the mean time I think Gene / Ken should be given the benefit of the doubt and his forecasts promulgated here reviewed and then people can make up their own mind.

In that respect we can see for ourselves very shortly as Gene/Ken recently made this forecast last Saturday 9th January on another thread:

“We expect the cold to peak at the end of this month when the Earth-Moon distance is the shortest for the year, after which the extreme cold should start to abate.”

He elaborated on this by stating:

“This month coming up I am saying there should be overnight snow around this month's New Moon then precipitation will dwindle to almost nothing, with a dry spell beginning on or near the 19th, although still staying cold. Around the end of the month will be the turning point. Snow may return in the first week of February but by the second and third weeks warmth and thawing should set in.”

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055792875

I’d interpret that as the extreme cold we had on Saturday will get even worse by the end of this month… “cold to peak” in Gene/Ken’s words. So it should be even colder than last weeks lows … -10’s & 12’s etc… at the end of Jan.

And the New Moon is, I believe, on Friday 15th Jan, so we should have overnight snow Thursday night, Friday night or Saturday Night then it will be very dry (“snow around this month's New Moon then precipitation will dwindle to almost nothing”)

So we can all soon see for ourselves.

A part of me hopes Gene/Ken is right and I wish him all the best with his predictions.

Thanks for your objectivity. I don't know that the end of January will be colder than what has been already in some places, this will vary, but I do feel that after the end of January the extreme cold should abate. Temperatures are very inexact. First of all a thermometer only measures the temperature of itself. Secondly, most sensors are at airports, and not many people live at airports and much less farm at one. Thirdly, the mean is the max+min/2, which is not necessarily representative of the day. It could be 19C max for 5 minutes just before the day's reading is recorded, and 1C min for 5 minutes in the moning, but 3C max for most of the day. But the recorded mean will still be (19+1)/2=10C, three times what it really was. All anyone can comment on is trends. Which is why coldest ever, or warmest for a decade, means little or nothing.
Ken Ring

Gene Derm

snow ghost wrote: »

“This month coming up I am saying there should be overnight snow around this month's New Moon
And the New Moon is, I believe, on Friday 15th Jan, so we should have overnight snow Thursday night, Friday night or Saturday Night then it will be very dry (“snow around this month's New Moon then precipitation will dwindle to almost nothing”)

So we can all soon see for ourselves.

A part of me hopes Gene/Ken is right and I wish him all the best with his predictions.

Well, that New moon snow has arrived as expected. Cold air temperatures means low evaporation. Low evaporation means no moisture to make snow. The best snow does not come from the north. It comes when warm moist air from the south mixes with cold air from the north. That's what has been developing over the last few days so one wonders why the big surprise on the part of weather services. They must be aware that winter snow falls on rising temperatures because it is textbook stuff that a snowflake is an iceflake that expands.
Get ready soon for that run of dry days.
Ken Ring

M.T. Cranium

To all readers, if you recall my study posted earlier showing pressure troughs at January full and new moon (including late Dec for the time sample), we had the full moon event on time, and we're about to have the new moon event on time. My research model gives slightly different results from Ken's, perhaps it is more semantics than science.

I would say that a mid-January new moon would normally bring a strong pulse of moisture and warmth near Ireland (timing line three) with the mean storm track likely to be between Donegal and Iceland. The full moon event on the average would be similar but in this past case, it had to fight with the strong retrograde block and took the path of least resistance around the south side of that. But both lows are on timing line three at astronomical event time.

Now, my theory (and it is mine) says that the late Jan full moon will be preceded by another strong energy peak at "northern max" on the 27th, so look for two strong lows to approach Ireland on or about the 27th and the 30th with the full moon.

The only thing that occasionally disrupts this pattern each winter is any long-lasting blocking high centered right over the UK and Ireland. Then you can expect the lows to split and for one to go north of Iceland, the other into Iberia and the Med (or southern France). So if the cold spell after this weekend happens to be stronger than modelled and plants an inversion high over Ireland, these northern max and full moon events will miss left and right. Otherwise, should be direct hits, strong winds, rain (snow ahead of warm fronts possibly) and from other research variables I have in my model, briefly quite mild again.

I'd love to collaborate with Ken after this winter's done, because I sense that some of our slightly different results are caused by different data series and what I described earlier, the effect that if you have timing lines and predictable lows, then you must also have mid-point predictable ridge or high positions (at event time).

We'll see how this pans out. Very strong storms occurred with the Jan 30 or thereabouts full moons in 1953 and 1983 (both caused very strong winds in Ireland, the UK and Holland, and both caused substantial flooding from the North Sea, 1953 of course far the worse).

The Daniel Defoe storm in (n.s. 8 Dec, o.s. 26 Nov) 1703, had it fallen in the modern calendar, was around the new moon. The Jan 1990 severe gale happened almost right on the new moon as well. 10 Dec 1882 was a new moon. The 1839 storm was due to a second high energy peak falling between new and full moon; the peak was the JC/SC event. I am researching this storm and trying to assess what happened at the full and new moons around it. My theory does not exclude other storm dates, it does predict more frequent and more reliable storms at the winter new and full moons.

The Jan 19, 2007 storm, quite intense in southern England, was at new moon also.

The 35-year pressure analysis shows a 12-14 mb trough on average at Malin Head on these full and new moon dates. The effect fades and disperses into February. More later ... but you get the picture.

Gene Derm

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

To all readers, if you recall my study posted earlier showing pressure troughs at January full and new moon (including late Dec for the time sample), we had the full moon event on time, and we're about to have the new moon event on time. My research model gives slightly different results from Ken's, perhaps it is more semantics than science.

I'd love to collaborate with Ken after this winter's done.
Very strong storms occurred with the Jan 30 or thereabouts full moons in 1953 and 1983 (both caused very strong winds in Ireland, the UK and Holland, and both caused substantial flooding from the North Sea, 1953 of course far the worse).

The Daniel Defoe storm in (n.s. 8 Dec, o.s. 26 Nov) 1703, had it fallen in the modern calendar, was around the new moon. The Jan 1990 severe gale happened almost right on the new moon as well. 10 Dec 1882 was a new moon. The 1839 storm was due to a second high energy peak falling between new and full moon; the peak was the JC/SC event. I am researching this storm and trying to assess what happened at the full and new moons around it. The Jan 19, 2007 storm, quite intense in southern England, was at new moon also.
.

You will find that all the events you mention are at or near perigeal or apogeal dates. I think the Line of Apse is more relevant than phase, and full and new moon timings are influenced by earth-moon distance. In short, perigee times determine the true lunar month. This year highest tides are full moons until April, then new moons till November, associated with perigee. New moon+apogee brought this snow because in this combination the day Moon would be higher, increasing warmth by preventing the approach of colder air from space.
I am glad MTC arrived at similar predictions as in my Ireland Almanac 2010, even though our methods may not be identical. As I have said previously, there is more than one way to get to Dublin. Collaboration is always welcome.
Ken Ring

Villain

Ken have you any idea why you got the first 2 weeks in January so wrong in your yearly forecast i.e. didn't have tempatures anywhere near what they were?

kerry1960

:pac:He also completely failed to 'predict' the record breaking rainfall last November ,the two very major Weather events this Winter each lasting 3 weeks seem to have escaped his attention :rolleyes: , yet he issued the below 'forecast' to a poster on 26/11/09 .


quote=Gene Derm;63205191]Hi Tucker1971
I have mostly dry for the whole country between 1-9 July, except for rain in north and SW on 5 July, and starting to cloud over with drizzle patches across the north and Sligo to Louth on 8th and 9th. If you give me your latitude and longitude I can supply an astrological analysis.
cheers
Ken[/quote][

(''astrological analysis'' :pac::pac:)

some interesting reading here..... http://www.sillybeliefs.com/ring.html
some more...... http://forums.ski.com.au/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=336431&page=1
yet more...... http://thesecondsight.blogspot.com/2006/08/true-lunatic.html.

M.T. Cranium

Whether Ken's right or wrong about any given forecast, I am sure that you can use these approaches to make long-range forecasts, in fact, I have been doing that independently (so far, I think I understand that our methods are similar but not identical).

I would invite interested parties to check out the long-range winter forecast issued on the forecast thread on 7 November and see if that sounds random -- I don't claim much more than maybe 65% accuracy in my program of research-driven forecasts (long-range) but it has been improving over the past two years.

So it seems to me a little bit pointless to dwell on Ken's forecasts if we're perhaps on the verge of making a forward leap through the collaboration of several investigators looking at lunar and/or solar system magnetic field approaches to this challenge. I've also been in contact with two other "pioneer" workers in this field. Unlike Ken, none of the rest of us consider the work to be "astrological" but I understand why he uses that terminology. I consider it to be an application of newly discovered connections between astronomy and meteorology, hence "astro-climatology" a term that I coined in 1980 for my research.

If I can get past the current work crunch with the winter weather etc, I hope to finish off a study of barometric pressure for the full year (1975-2009) to extend the findings I showed earlier, and also to study some of Ken's material and forecasts to give an independent assessment of where I would place the accuracy figures. You can only do this in a meaningful way by taking a fairly long time interval to eliminate random chance of one forecast being right, another wrong, to establish a reliable pattern of percentage accuracy. I have some accepted guidelines for "accuracy" that are used in other studies of long-range forecasts. I've seen some indications that Ken is justified in saying his work is significant but I have no really strong impression of where the accuracy figure would actually end up.

I'm also sadly familiar with the concept of hostile review, for example once many years ago, someone out to "blow my ideas out of the water" so to speak managed to find one incorrect data point in a validation study that was highly objective, out of about six thousand points, and used this to claim that I was doctoring my results and blah blah. It was a total lie, the error was almost negligible against the mass of data and resulted from a station move so that I had its location on the wrong side of a zero anomaly line.

These hostile reviewers then went on to blacklist me from active participation in the community and tried to spread rumours that I was mentally ill and had been in a mental hospital for five years. It came out many years later that a totally different individual living about twenty miles away from me had in fact contacted these authorities and proposed some theories shortly before indeed being confined to a mental hospital (where he may still be, for all we know). This may sound like a missing chapter of the Gulag Archipelago, and in fact it is. My work should have been advanced and recognized at that point (which by the way was 1987) but instead the community went off on the crazy chase for proof of and development of human control over the atmosphere that has more or less wrecked our science (IMHO).

These false stories and the blacklisting have never been formally acknowledged nor compensated (of course) nor will they ever be, I suppose, because science has no ultimate oversight other than human conscience and integrity; these are missing from some higher corridors of this particular branch of science and will remain missing until we have an intellectual revolution similar to the continental drift episode or going back further, the ice age controversy, playing out in climate science.

The way they rationalized their actions was to say, "well, we think the guy is crazy so that's just the same, and he wants to waste the public's tax dollars." So they set themselves up as being not only weather forecasters but psychiatrists and politicians. A sense of megalomania pervades modern climate science at the highest levels, and this house of cards needs just perhaps one more shove before it comes down.

I don't blame most of the people at other levels of the science, they are just following an established scientific routine in the short-term forecasting or other forms of research. But they are being denied all sorts of potential advances by this attitude which stems from a misguided taboo on what they think is mumbo-jumbo style astrology (as in how's your day going to be).

I've got some other stories too, the book will one day be published. Russia was not the only country with thought police.

Villain

I accept your opinion MT but the question I have is Mr Ring is charging for his forecast the forecast he charged for was way out for the first 2 weeks. I'm not having a go just wondering is there any reason why he got it so wrong.

I respect what he does and admire anyone who has an interest but most people do it FOC so when someone charges I think they are open to been questioned?

M.T. Cranium

I think in some countries there is more of an acceptance of private meteorology than in others, for example, in the USA there are many private consultants, in Canada, almost none.

The bigger picture is that Ken is a forecast consultant who charges for his services and is able to do so because there's a market. His share of the market ultimately depends on his accuracy over time. When I did this (by mail subscription) before the internet era in the 1980s, I had roughly 90% voluntary renewals of annual subscriptions. That meant that nine out of ten people who were willing to pay $25 a year to get twelve mailed out forecasts wanted to keep going the next year, etc. That's a pretty good renewal rate in that sort of enterprise. I never found it necessary to send out reminders, people renewed on the first reminder or just when they knew it was time.

The reason I don't still do this ... it was a question of volume of business, stalled out before I had the cash flow to advertise the service more widely (all of the several hundred subscribers were first attracted by a free forecast placed in a publication that they read). Mail and printing costs were going up and I found that $25 was the going rate. I got into other lines of employment that took a lot of my time, and went through the above described experience of having the door slammed in my face despite willingness of some of my subsrcibers to vouch for my forecasts as being better than alternatives available at that time (including the Farmers Almanac which sells mass quantities at $2 a shot covering a whole year in advance; some swear by it, a validation study that I studied showed near-random results, but they had everything worded quite cleverly to cover many different outcomes ... I don't see that tendency in Ken's work at all by the way, he's quite specific).

Then the internet era was looming and we decided to abandon the print-to-mail concept, posting forecasts free on a bulletin board (remember those? pre-internet text only). I was working and/or golfing all the time and found the time required to make an extra few dollars not worth the effort at that point. Then I've branched into further research since about 1999-2000 and I'm doing what people know about plus a few other things besides. The objective is to have a website with a pay option but some basic forecasts for free. I feel no great financial pressure so I keep refining the research because it would be great to launch with even more "figured out" and less error in the outlooks (talking about 30-90 days here, I've found there is no discernible market for short-range forecasts on a commercial basis in most countries, these opportunities have long since gone to adequately skilled competition, people don't want to trade up in this field when they already have market share and name recognition, it's too much of a risk).

A similar situation attends the well-known Joe Bastardi ... he has a sort of mixed reputation in the community but he has a faithful following and can market his services. The only thing that would derail anyone in that sort of enterprise is relentless poor performance, or outside interference, or a bit of both. I trust the farmers and other business people to make these determinations of how and where to spend their money -- they have reasons for seeking and gaining the information, it saves them in many ways to be able to anticipate details of the coming season, in some cases what crops to choose, what returns to expect, some idea of global conditions sometimes helps them too. I'm pretty certain from my own experience that you wouldn't achieve much visibility doing this if you weren't better than average -- such people would not survive the first renewal period. But these are all subjective impressions, I should try to get a numerical handle on Ken's current performance over a year at least. Any one anecdotal "miss" cannot really be used definitively, just as one hit is not necessarily the whole story.

We're near an end game in this long process, I believe; there are just too many people storming the castle now to believe that the status quo will remain in place another generation. I predict that by 2015 or 2020 at the latest, there will be some form of recognition of this approach in general terms. How they do that saving face and maintaining "control" of meteorology remains to be seen. I don't think the alternates have the cohesion or the public credibility to do an end run and set up a new science -- that more or less happened with relativity physics during the ether controversy. But that's probably what is secretly feared inside the castle, that the attackers will retreat to build their own castle, call out to the funding authorities and say, look, our science is better than their science, stop funding them and start funding us. I can't see that happening because the alternates all put together cannot possibly satisfy the volume of demand for routine forecasting and quite frankly, most of the alternates have no skill in short range forecasting, nor much interest in it. And the orthodox science controls the observational side (our alternate methodology would have to go totally nuclear to be able to avoid observation as per tide table forecasting nowadays).

It could happen through sweet reason, but many of us tend to be cranky after years of ridicule and opposition, funny thing about that. I'm quite an easy going person as you might guess, but even I don't really appreciate being called a lunatic by pedants and paper-shufflers getting paid to keep a desk from falling over. Fundamental questions of whether the public are really getting value for tax money need to be raised at these administrative levels, some of these people have a deep sense of entitlement that is not matched by any dedication to the public interest (which is to get better weather forecasts for their tax money). This year's UK Metoffice fiasco, seen against the backdrop of numerous alternate and better forecasts, illustrates my point that the community has failed to keep advancing the science the old-fashioned way, trial and error testing of new ideas, acceptance of those that work better than the status quo, no pre-conceived rejections of types of ideas because they don't suit paradigms taught for a century that have never produced accurate long-range forecasts. It's becoming clear even to the general public that the community is not functioning like other sciences.

Gene Derm

Villain wrote: »

Ken have you any idea why you got the first 2 weeks in January so wrong in your yearly forecast i.e. didn't have tempatures anywhere near what they were?

Yes, I have already explained this. What I didn’t account for was the colder Sun. On my website and in my books I point out that the moon method is about timing of events. I never claim I am good at temperatures. Temperatures are controlled by the Sun. It has given colder winters to most countries in the past year. Down here we had the coldest May ever and the coldest June in 45 years. N Dakota had snow in June, their summer. The databases that I use for forecasts use cycles of 18-20 years ago, 36-38 and 71-72, when the Sun was in different positions. The Sun is very difficult to predict around, because we don’t know all its influences. The Moon is much easier. Also, historical temperatures are very inexact and untrustworthy. As I have posted here recently but will say again if you have just joined the forum, firstly, a thermometer only measures the temperature of itself. Hold the bulb of one and see the reading, then go a yard away and the reading will be different. Same with shade/sun, night/day, facing N or S, in the wind or sheltered. Secondly, most temperature sensors are at airports, or on top of schools or post offices, and not many people live in those locations and much less farm at them. Thirdly, the mean is not at all representative of the day. All anyone can comment on is trends. Which is why coldest ever, or warmest for a decade, means zilch. My graphs of trends are more important than my data figures, which are just points of focus for trends. I keep saying that till I am blue in the face and still someone will nitpick over one suggested temperature for one day that I was supposed to have gotten wrong. Well, yes, expect it to be wrong if that is going to be the basis of appraisal of what I do. Fortunately farmers don't see it that way and reaIise what is going on. I don't think I was 'out' for events or trends, e.g. around the full and new moons, if you make that the focus and not the extent of the cold, which was so crippling I can understand why it would have been hard to see past it. But I think a good dry period is almost upon Ireland, the end of January will be colder than what has been already in at least some places, because obviously this will vary, and I do feel that after the end of January the extreme cold should abate. Longrange forecasting in the ancient past was used for that kind of information. No one had to be somewhere at 2.25 next Friday week for which they needed a detailed weather analysis. They just wanted to know, will next month be wet or dry and how long will the drought last. For that they set up the kind of forecasting methods I and MTC are talking about and which deliver on that basis and not much more. For some that is worth paying money for. I don't sell to anyone who isn't prepared to pay and I don't force myself on anyone. I also put a lot out free, as you can see on this and other fora, and on my website and in my interviews. If you don't like what I say you can simply shop elsewhere. I sell opinions, that is all.
regards
Ken Ring
www.predictweather.com

Villain

Gene Derm wrote: »

Yes, I have already explained this. What I didn’t account for was the colder Sun. On my website and in my books I point out that the moon method is about timing of events. I never claim I am good at temperatures. Temperatures are controlled by the Sun. It has given colder winters to most countries in the past year. Down here we had the coldest May ever and the coldest June in 45 years. N Dakota had snow in June, their summer. The databases that I use for forecasts use cycles of 18-20 years ago, 36-38 and 71-72, when the Sun was in different positions. The Sun is very difficult to predict around, because we don’t know all its influences. The Moon is much easier. Also, historical temperatures are very inexact and untrustworthy. As I have posted here recently but will say again if you have just joined the forum, firstly, a thermometer only measures the temperature of itself. Hold the bulb of one and see the reading, then go a yard away and the reading will be different. Same with shade/sun, night/day, facing N or S, in the wind or sheltered. Secondly, most temperature sensors are at airports, or on top of schools or post offices, and not many people live in those locations and much less farm at them. Thirdly, the mean is not at all representative of the day. All anyone can comment on is trends. Which is why coldest ever, or warmest for a decade, means zilch. My graphs of trends are more important than my data figures, which are just points of focus for trends. I keep saying that till I am blue in the face and still someone will nitpick over one suggested temperature for one day that I was supposed to have gotten wrong. Well, yes, expect it to be wrong if that is going to be the basis of appraisal of what I do. Fortunately farmers don't see it that way and reaIise what is going on. I don't think I was 'out' for events or trends, e.g. around the full and new moons, if you make that the focus and not the extent of the cold, which was so crippling I can understand why it would have been hard to see past it. But I think a good dry period is almost upon Ireland, the end of January will be colder than what has been already in at least some places, because obviously this will vary, and I do feel that after the end of January the extreme cold should abate. Longrange forecasting in the ancient past was used for that kind of information. No one had to be somewhere at 2.25 next Friday week for which they needed a detailed weather analysis. They just wanted to know, will next month be wet or dry and how long will the drought last. For that they set up the kind of forecasting methods I and MTC are talking about and which deliver on that basis and not much more. For some that is worth paying money for. I don't sell to anyone who isn't prepared to pay and I don't force myself on anyone. I also put a lot out free, as you can see on this and other fora, and on my website and in my interviews. If you don't like what I say you can simply shop elsewhere. I sell opinions, that is all.
regards
Ken Ring
www.predictweather.com

Ken I can understand what you say but with respect when someone pays €110 for a forecast which includes max and min temps they expect that they are part of the forecast. I can understand that your method isn't meant to be held down to one day, you say it can 3 days either way.

The reason I asked the question was because a forecast that cost €110 had temps for the first 2 weeks of January that were way off, not 1 or 2 days but 2 weeks. Perhaps you should consider excluding temp data or giving more or warning about the accuracy of them?

Gene Derm

Villain wrote: »

I accept your opinion MT but the question I have is Mr Ring is charging for his forecast the forecast he charged for was way out for the first 2 weeks. I'm not having a go just wondering is there any reason why he got it so wrong.

I respect what he does and admire anyone who has an interest but most people do it FOC so when someone charges I think they are open to been questioned?

Think of it this way. I am not an astrologer in the modern sense of the word but an analogy may be drawn. Many people buy horoscopes. They accept them for what they are and are happy to pay on that basis, because they know they are buying suggestions. But if that month they did not meet a tall dark stranger, if the week was not good for romance, if travel did not present itself, if an inheritance did not arrive from an unexpected source, if they did not feel it was a good time for new beginnings and for concentrating on family and friends, do they ask for their money back? If they did, then doctors would very soon go out of business, as would economists, teachers and all kinds of other consultancies.
Ken Ring

Villain

Gene Derm wrote: »

Think of it this way. I am not an astrologer in the modern sense of the word but an analogy may be drawn. Many people buy horoscopes. They accept them for what they are and are happy to pay on that basis, because they know they are buying suggestions. But if that month they did not meet a tall dark stranger, if the week was not good for romance, if travel did not present itself, if an inheritance did not arrive from an unexpected source, if they did not feel it was a good time for new beginnings and for concentrating on family and friends, do they ask for their money back?

umm so your saying that your forecasts are as accurate as horoscopes?

Gene Derm

Villain wrote: »

Ken I can understand what you say but with respect when someone pays €110 for a forecast which includes max and min temps they expect that they are part of the forecast. I can understand that your method isn't meant to be held down to one day, you say it can 3 days either way.

The reason I asked the question was because a forecast that cost €110 had temps for the first 2 weeks of January that were way off, not 1 or 2 days but 2 weeks. Perhaps you should consider excluding temp data or giving more or warning about the accuracy of them?

Nothing I sell costs €110. My year report costs 89EURO, which is 79pds. For that you get the dataspreadsheet, the graphs, moon-event information and the rain maps for the whole country for 365 days. You infer that I charge 110pds for two weeks. That is rubbish. That would only be 22pds.
On every report that goes out the warning is always written about the trends and where the emphasis is to be placed. With the time I spend doing a report it would be more financially rewarding cleaning houses. My research and self-training time has been unchargeable, has spanned many years, and has preceded any forecast work. It is akin to building an engineering workshop. If I was in a university I would have received wages all that time, but I had to find other jobs to finance the study. As I have already said, if you don't like what I offer, simply shop elsewhere.
Ken Ring

Villain

Gene Derm wrote: »

Nothing I sell costs €110. My year report costs 89EURO, which is 79pds. For that you get the dataspreadsheet, the graphs, moon-event information and the rain maps for the whole country for 365 days. You infer that I charge 110pds for two weeks. That is rubbish. That would only be 22pds.
On every report that goes out the warning is always written about the trends and where the emphasis is to be placed. With the time I spend doing a report it would be more financially rewarding cleaning houses. My research and self-training time has been unchargeable, has spanned many years, and has preceded any forecast work. It is akin to building an engineering workshop. If I was in a university I would have received wages all that time, but I had to find other jobs to finance the study. As I have already said, if you don't like what I offer, simply shop elsewhere.
Ken Ring

225 NZ Dollars for a year was €109 when I paid for it and I never said that was for 2 weeks, I simply asked how in the first month of a yearly forecast I paid €109 for you got it so wrong.

You said then that Temps can't really be that accurate but the fact is you include them in a yearly forecast.????