And I'm beginning to freeze, I've got icicles hanging from my knees

[venta]

Recently, a colleague who comes from a family of meteorologists has been explaining to me how the only reliable weather forecaster is the Met Office. People like the BBC lift their forecasts directly from the Met Office's predictions. Metcheck, he tells me, get their data from the Met Office, but use their own models and are unreliable.

I actually think Metcheck is more reliable than the the Met Office. On Sunday night, having seen the TV weather forecast, we hastily changed our plans and on Monday we fled south before the threatened snow arrived. The Met Office said snow, snow, snow. Metcheck said pshaw, just a bit of rain.

An sms from the mother this morning confirms that Metcheck was indeed correct. Bother.

Anyway, I'm ignoring meteorologicalTim for now and trusting Metcheck.

The forecast for our postcode on Wednesday is as follows:



In case that image-compression was too much, here's a closeup:



Eek. Time to panic-buy blankets.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I expect Metcheck, like most independent organisations, using US global data released under FOI rules, rather than UKMO data processed using the software what I write. They will have different forecasters looking at different model output, produced on coarser grids. I doubt they run their own models, just some postprocessing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I was definitely told that, unlike most places, Metcheck do run their own models. It is entirely possible the person who told me didn't know what he was on about, though :)

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

To run a decent model you need a top500 supercomputer. I don't know if they have one or not.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think Wikipedia suggests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Forecast_System) that they do not. (Although they are presumably using a different model from the Met Office.)