All Things Met Eireann Related Go in Here (MOD NOTE #1)

Bejubby · 09-03-2013 9:57pm

Over to RTE1 for the 9oc news and weather.
Gerry,Siobhan or Evelyn hmmmm

Speak Now · 09-03-2013 10:05pm

Bejubby wrote: »

Over to RTE1 for the 9oc news and weather.
Gerry,Siobhan or Evelyn hmmmm

whoever it was after news at 6!!

Darwin · 09-03-2013 10:06pm

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

whoever it was after news at 6!!

Gerry "the schleet" Murphy

Bejubby · 09-03-2013 10:10pm

Schnowww

Speak Now · 09-03-2013 10:38pm

Bejubby wrote: »

Schnowww

Possibly!!!!! ;-)

Pangea · 10-03-2013 2:22pm

Well how was the farming forecast?

Rougies · 10-03-2013 5:12pm

Pangea wrote: »

Well how was the farming forecast?

http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10118969/

Macy0161 · 12-03-2013 1:06pm

Tried to resist posting on this, as I think they generally do alright, but a few posts congratulating them on calling the last day or so right have kinda got on my wick. Plenty of people here called a risk of snow, but at least very cold temperatures for Sunday/ Monday/ Today last week (Wednesday iirc was when model consensus). Met were way behind the curve on giving the public proper notice imo.

Calling it on Sunday morning isn't giving people proper notice of the risk of severe cold and snow - they basically left it to a nowcast situation. Whatever about the general public, they could've given farmers and people that do rely on the weather more notice. They don't have to get into percentages - just tell the truth that they can't be certain, but the models are showing the possibility of much colder weather, just to give people a heads up.

Duggys Housemate · 12-03-2013 1:18pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

Tried to resist posting on this, as I think they generally do alright, but a few posts congratulating them on calling the last day or so right have kinda got on my wick. Plenty of people here called a risk of snow, but at least very cold temperatures for Sunday/ Monday/ Today last week (Wednesday iirc was when model consensus). Met were way behind the curve on giving the public proper notice imo.

Calling it on Sunday morning isn't giving people proper notice of the risk of severe cold and snow - they basically left it to a nowcast situation. Whatever about the general public, they could've given farmers and people that do rely on the weather more notice. They don't have to get into percentages - just tell the truth that they can't be certain, but the models are showing the possibility of much colder weather, just to give people a heads up.

There was no accumulations where I am. Dublin. If Met Eireann did anything wrong it was over-estimating the risk of accumulation on their Sunday forecasts. They did predict the cold.

Macy0161 · 12-03-2013 2:06pm

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

There was no accumulations where I am. Dublin. If Met Eireann did anything wrong it was over-estimating the risk of accumulation on their Sunday forecasts. They did predict the cold.

They were still going with dry late last week, and then gradually upgraded until Sunday's 3-8cm possible. And some places did get that. My point remains, they shouldn't be getting slaps on the back given their forecasts on Thursday and Friday of last week, which really underplayed how things were looking and how things actually materialised. Even leaving aside the snow, they had to (apparently) be prompted to mention the windchill, which would be a big consideration for the elderly and for those keeping animals.

Duggys Housemate · 12-03-2013 2:45pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

They were still going with dry late last week, and then gradually upgraded until Sunday's 3-8cm possible. And some places did get that. My point remains, they shouldn't be getting slaps on the back given their forecasts on Thursday and Friday of last week, which really underplayed how things were looking and how things actually materialised. Even leaving aside the snow, they had to (apparently) be prompted to mention the windchill, which would be a big consideration for the elderly and for those keeping animals.

Outside of this forum this is how people saw the forecast last week.

Met Eireann predict cold for Monday.
They predict "wintry showers" for Monday.
On Sunday they upgraded.
The upgrade was wrong, everything else was right. We got wintry showers of little import for most.

As for windchill, they mentioned that in all forecasts I watched. I watched most reports from Thursday to see what they were predicting.

MidMan25 · 12-03-2013 3:07pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

Tried to resist posting on this, as I think they generally do alright, but a few posts congratulating them on calling the last day or so right have kinda got on my wick. Plenty of people here called a risk of snow, but at least very cold temperatures for Sunday/ Monday/ Today last week (Wednesday iirc was when model consensus). Met were way behind the curve on giving the public proper notice imo.

Calling it on Sunday morning isn't giving people proper notice of the risk of severe cold and snow - they basically left it to a nowcast situation. Whatever about the general public, they could've given farmers and people that do rely on the weather more notice. They don't have to get into percentages - just tell the truth that they can't be certain, but the models are showing the possibility of much colder weather, just to give people a heads up.

If they were to give people a heads up about the possibility of colder weather then they would have ended up doing this quite a few times this year with most times resulting in nothing. Surely that sort of approach to forecasting would have much the same effect of damaging their reputation in the eyes of certain people.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't and all that..

In the end of the day they are the professionals and anybody who thinks that they can't do as good a job as amateur forecasters on forums is deluded. It doesn't take a brave man to call the weather for 5 days time on a forum when he doesn't have a whole lot to lose.

I assume Met Eireann operate according to strict protocols and are expected to take a sensible approach to forecasting the weather. As far as I'm concerned they do this.

By god we're a nation of moaners. We'll moan about anything. Almost as bad as the French :pac:

Macy0161 · 12-03-2013 3:11pm

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Outside of this forum this is how people saw the forecast last week.

Met Eireann predict cold for Monday.
They predict "wintry showers" for Monday.
On Sunday they upgraded.
The upgrade was wrong, everything else was right. We got wintry showers of little import for most.

As for windchill, they mentioned that in all forecasts I watched. I watched most reports from Thursday to see what they were predicting.

I don't agree they flagged how cold it was, or how cold it was going to feel, but I'm just going to agree to disagree at this stage rather than get in circular argument. I think they've done ok over the winter as a whole and I haven't really joined in the bashing (and I am even relunctant now), but I definitely thought they underplayed the cold for the last day or two at the time period that people could've got prepared. That's going on comments from "real world" people as well.

I think it was Wicklow Weather that phoned them about them not mentioning windchill, which either coincidentally or not, got added to subsequent forecasts after that call was made.

Macy0161 · 12-03-2013 3:19pm

MidMan25 wrote: »

If they were to give people a heads up about the possibility of colder weather then they would have ended up doing this quite a few times this year with most times resulting in nothing. Surely that sort of approach to forecasting would have much the same effect of damaging their reputation in the eyes of certain people.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't and all that..

In my limited knowledge, I think this was the first time there was such model consensus for the winter, so I think it is a bit different. I'm reluctantly having a bash, and wouldn't have bothered only I don't agree with them getting congratulated for calling it when I don't think they did.

MidMan25 · 12-03-2013 3:23pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

In my limited knowledge, I think this was the first time there was such model consensus for the winter, so I think it is a bit different. I'm reluctantly having a bash, and wouldn't have bothered only I don't agree with them getting congratulated for calling it when I don't think they did.

I suppose there was model consensus for cold but the finer details are always harder to pin down especially precipitation types. Haven't seen anyone congratulating them but if that's the case then it's a bit silly! They did their job to the required standard nothing more nothing less as far as I'm concerned.

I must remember to congratulate the cashier next time she gives me the right change

compsys · 12-03-2013 3:26pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

In my limited knowledge, I think this was the first time there was such model consensus for the winter, so I think it is a bit different. I'm reluctantly having a bash, and wouldn't have bothered only I don't agree with them getting congratulated for calling it when I don't think they did.

In fairness this was a 36 hour coold snap at best. Even today temps are back up to around 5 degrees. It was hardly anything to write home about or issue warnings for.

I also doubt the cold weather inconvenienced many people yesterday. Snow was slight to moderate and conditions were bearable. It wasn't anything to start issuing warnings for.

icesnowfrost · 13-03-2013 2:17am

Have a read of this

M.T. Cranium · 13-03-2013 3:47am

There was of course some fairly significant snowfall in two regions (in the ROI) from reports on Boards, namely the southeast corner including Waterford city and a zone in Meath-Offaly. But even outside those zones, just because snow didn't accumulate to any great depth doesn't mean it had no impact. People still had to drive in it, and some ice resulted on pavement. The impact on agriculture was probably quite significant.

Without Boards, I feel that most of Ireland would have been rather surprised by the amount of snow (in the air) and to some extent the degree of the chill. Maybe not, but we made an effort to assess things and I honestly feel it was a reasonable effort, maybe we got a bit unlucky with the snow not accumulating (those of us including myself who were saying accumulations, that is, some were not). Maybe it is better to be wrong on the conservative side, that is obviously the philosophy of most government weather services. The market will determine these things if in fact there really is a market and not a rigged monopoly. You'll have to decide which of those you have, I'm too far away to give an opinion on it. Here in Canada, I have felt for a long time that the economics are tilted towards a monopoly; in the U.S.A. the tradition of private forecasting is far more advanced. If nothing else, the private forecaster has nowhere to hide when things go south, in a large organization somebody confronted about a bad forecast can always say, "I wasn't on duty that day" although "the models" are always the whipping boys of choice.

Anyway, from my perspective, any errors were based simply on subjective interpretation, I think it was fairly obvious what was going to happen in terms of structure, but things were just marginally too dry (more than being too warm) for the snow produced to stick on the ground in most of Dublin. I find it a bit mystifying because Dublin is at 53 deg N and snow sticks on the ground at 2 C in New England at 43 deg N, you would think the small amount of insolation getting through there would be at least the equal but maybe the sun tries a bit harder over Europe knowing how many regulatory agencies there are. The sun knows that American courts are too busy with serious matters to get on his (its/her) case.

Or maybe it's those ley lines.

Sensual Cucumber · 13-03-2013 4:04am

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

There was of course some fairly significant snowfall in two regions (in the ROI) from reports on Boards, namely the southeast corner including Waterford city and a zone in Meath-Offaly. But even outside those zones, just because snow didn't accumulate to any great depth doesn't mean it had no impact. People still had to drive in it, and some ice resulted on pavement. The impact on agriculture was probably quite significant.

Without Boards, I feel that most of Ireland would have been rather surprised by the amount of snow (in the air) and to some extent the degree of the chill. Maybe not, but we made an effort to assess things and I honestly feel it was a reasonable effort, maybe we got a bit unlucky with the snow not accumulating (those of us including myself who were saying accumulations, that is, some were not). Maybe it is better to be wrong on the conservative side, that is obviously the philosophy of most government weather services. The market will determine these things if in fact there really is a market and not a rigged monopoly. You'll have to decide which of those you have, I'm too far away to give an opinion on it. Here in Canada, I have felt for a long time that the economics are tilted towards a monopoly; in the U.S.A. the tradition of private forecasting is far more advanced. If nothing else, the private forecaster has nowhere to hide when things go south, in a large organization somebody confronted about a bad forecast can always say, "I wasn't on duty that day" although "the models" are always the whipping boys of choice.

Anyway, from my perspective, any errors were based simply on subjective interpretation, I think it was fairly obvious what was going to happen in terms of structure, but things were just marginally too dry (more than being too warm) for the snow produced to stick on the ground in most of Dublin. I find it a bit mystifying because Dublin is at 53 deg N and snow sticks on the ground at 2 C in New England at 43 deg N, you would think the small amount of insolation getting through there would be at least the equal but maybe the sun tries a bit harder over Europe knowing how many regulatory agencies there are. The sun knows that American courts are too busy with serious matters to get on his (its/her) case.

Or maybe it's those ley lines.

Keep up the good work MT, its much better to be wrong on the ramping side than the conservative side. Dublin spent the majority of the day in the shadow of the IOM so really there was only light flurries and not one heavy shower. It was actually heavier 2 weeks ago. The flurries did stick but there was so little that the sun between the showers melted it. A frustrating day overall..story of the winter

Pangea · 13-03-2013 10:52pm

Goes to show how sporadic some of met.ies forecasts can be, met eireann mentioning significant snow risk this early. I wonder how long will that last on the forecast? Perhaps someone having a laugh while Gerry is off for a day or two. Nothing mentioned on the tv forecasts yet which is to be expected . It would be nice to see a white St Patricks day, it would be quite a novel event.

icesnowfrost · 19-03-2013 8:49pm

Loads of snow this morning with blizzard like conditions in Drogheda. ot melted by 2pm though. more on the way tomorrow I think. No new thread to write in so I said I'd put it in here. I can't open a new one from my phone. Im surprised no one opened at thread

acassells80 · 24-03-2013 12:16pm

They can't even forecast for the next 3 hours!! At 6am said we would have precipitation at 9am and the same for 11am, radar is clear with nothing to show!!

icesnowfrost · 25-03-2013 1:07pm

Is there a thread open about the currant weather ?

ZX7R · 27-03-2013 5:05pm

Quite confused by Met Eireann today, on the 3pm forecast not a menchion of an orange weather alert on there forecast ,yet they have on there home web page.If they think having an orange alert on line they should have it on there televised forecast

Rougies · 27-03-2013 5:50pm

ZX7R wrote: »

Quite confused by Met Eireann today, on the 3pm forecast not a menchion of an orange weather alert on there forecast ,yet they have on there home web page.If they think having an orange alert on line they should have it on there televised forecast

Not anymore

EDIT: I'm blind :P

Speak Now · 27-03-2013 5:54pm

Rougies wrote: »

Not anymore

http://www.met.ie/nationalwarnings/default.asp

ZX7R · 27-03-2013 5:55pm

Rougies wrote: »

Not anymore

It's still on there home page

STATUS ORANGE

Snow-ice Warning for Dublin, Kildare, Louth, Wicklow and Meath

Further snow showers today and tonight in the east with accumulations up to 5cm.
Issued:
27 March 2013 10:00
Valid:
27 March 2013 10:00 to 28 March 2013 09:00

but there is no weather warning on there forecast page:D

ZX7R · 27-03-2013 6:01pm

Jerry Seinfeld wrote: »

http://www.met.ie/nationalwarnings/default.asp

What i meant was Gerry never mentioned it o the 3pm forecast

mike65 · 02-04-2013 3:51pm

I heard two instances of met.error people on the radio this morning/lunchtime and both talked of rain at the weekend as temperatures rise. One quick look at the pressure charts and rain charts says dry.

jprboy · 02-04-2013 5:49pm

Right, Mike, will venerate or slate you as appropriate, once the evidence is in

All Things Met Eireann Related Go in Here (MOD NOTE #1)

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