Storm Brian Fails To Live Up To The Hype
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41704779
“Gusts of 78mph were recorded in Capel Curig and Aberdaron, north Wales, with 84mph recorded on the Isle of Wight [The Needles]”
Now, there’s a surprise!
As for the rest of the country, it made so little impact that the Met Office have not even bothered to do their usual news release.
To be fair, Brian hit Ireland much harder, with Shannon recording gusts of 55 kts, (63 mph), and maximum 10-minute sustained speeds of about 33 kts (38mph), making it a moderate gale on the Beaufort Scale.
http://www.met.ie/latest/yesterday.asp
http://www.met.ie/climate/daily-data.asp
UPDATE
Just come back from dinner, and seen the STORM BRAIN!!!!
I expect many have already spotted it, but I blame it on the Shiraz!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
At first I thought I read “Storm Brain”. But then I realized I did.
Anyone can have a brainstorm 😉
It can be fatal in some cases.
I thought I saw “realized”, then I realised I did.
🙂
In the words of DelBoy’s grandad:
“It weren’t my fault Del, it were my brain!”
Storm Drain perhaps? It’s the Met Office’s Life of Brian. It will be interesting to watch and see how the catastrophic winter forecast pans out.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/storm-brian-hector-maeve-wind-rain-uk-weather-a8014001.html
The Met Office clearly has ambitions to compete with the Americas. It should pull its neck in and swallow the bitter pill that we are, and always will be a feeble mirror of the what the Caribbean and northwards can throw up. In reality any comparison is embarrassing.
At the same time what the Atlantic/Caribbean, and Gulf can produce is quite often feeble compared to the Typhoons the Pacific produces.
That being said, I was just reviewing the history of the great Channel storm that struck the Allied invasions beaches in Normandy June 19-20, 1944. Has anyone found a detailed meteorological study of this storm? Much has been written about the forecast for D-day but the Gale of the 19-20 which most certainly had a tremendous effect on history and which struck with virtually no warning seems to have received far less investigation. In a matter of hours the Mulberries, built at tremendous cost and effort over a year, installed in 3 days, were virtually destroyed in hours the one in the British sector being repaired using salvaged parts from the more damaged on in the US sector.
Time and again, be it in the old world or new, the hype by the official weather agencies amplified by the media do not match reality. There will come a time when they will cry wolf even louder when the threat is really life threatening on a massive scale and people in the path won’t listen when they should. And who will be blamed?
It won’t be the weather agencies and the media will then hype the failure as if they have no culpability. And if they don’t like the party in control of the government they will hype their disaster response as a failure.
But it achieves the whole point of the exercise, by saying it loud enough and often enough they have unsubtly brain washed the public in to believing the weather is worse now than it has ever been.
This gets it in to the public domain, historical records and provides sound bytes for the Politicians and Green Activists to justify their controlling behaviour.
There is never any follow up corrections to this make believe.
The young are especially susceptible to this kind of brainwashing as they have no prior experience of how bad things used to be.
Attenbore is about to crank up the climate hype in the new Blue Planet series. Cue orchestra and weepy tales…
Just watched Shuckman interviewing Attenbore as if he they hardly knew each other and passing off all the lies about ocean acidification the barrier reef etc., etc., as if they were facts.
I am sure the new series oceans2 will be spectacular but who can stomach the old fossil spouting his nonsense behind all of the wonders.
He turned me off the first series to such an extent that I will not turn on the second.
Unlike his brother he will not be missed.
Passing off lies as facts fits the job description of the propagandist.
The same “Attenbore” who wishes us all to die in order to save the planet? I had one of his books which accompanied a 1980’s PBS series he did. I put that book on my very large brush pile and returned it to CO2. It made a nice blaze with all of the other weeds and dead branches.
With the UK met Office its more of case of not wanting a repeat of the Fish Storm of 1987. It seems nowadays they always big up potential bad weather because no one really complains when it doesn’t materialise. On the other hand if they forecast good weather and it doesn’t happen, they get pilloried.
I think the public are becoming increasingly sceptical. Look at the comments on the article I linked to above, and the vast majority are calling it a storm in a teacup.
Of course they do not wish the repeat the Michael Fish 1987 fiasco (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fish), but in over-hyping this storm they reveal that their current forecasting ability is not much better now than it was then.
It’s interesting reading wind speeds. Yesterday, we had 39 mph sustained winds with much higher gusts. Generally, at least once a year, somewhere in the state exceeds 100 mph gusts. I guess it’s all in what you get used to.
So how much was spent by the public and government, both local and national, for this over-hyped damp squib? Of course as usual this storm was not seen (forecast) 10 days ago because the Met Office ability to forecast accurately only extend to a 3 day limit (just as it has done for 40 years)
Maybe it is about time the UK government seriously thought about what public money is being spent on, all too often it seems to be an excess of needless hype to generate worry about weather and climate issues, instead publishing measured and thoughtful forecasts.
Maybe it is time to seriously thinking about selling off this Met Office, and contract back (on a competitive basis) the services required. The contract to have proper rules for realistic forecast reporting, and incorporate agreed levels of accuracy scores (that should impact contract payment levels), and agreed plans for how short term forecasting (1-10 days) can be improved in accuracy and timeliness.
If the Met Office can not do this then there are PLENTY of other weather agencies and companies that can (and currently make money doing it).
Sorry to be so much out of touch – but did I not read somewhere that some New Zealand outfit was going to provide forecasts to the lying BBC in place of the met office?
The BBC is a government agency that is directly funded by the UK government (the so call lincense[sic] fee is in fact a tax that goes into the general fund, part of which is used to fund the BBC). The reason for their current existence, in this age of vast amounts of commercial broadcasting, has never been adequately explained.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The UK Met Office is directly funded by the UK Government from general taxation. The Met Office says their remit is to ‘provides a range of information under the Public Weather Service (PWS), which is funded by the UK Government.’ —
From https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/what/pws
The reasons for the Met Office’s continual existence and funding also has never been adequately explained. Indeed there are plenty of commercial alternatives, some of which appear to offer better value in providing the above stated requirements.
I highly recommend the excellent xmetman for a detailed take on UK weather and climate and all prognostications from the Met Office
http://www.xmetman.com/wp/2017/10/22/storm-brian-a-bit-of-a-no-show/
I just wish they would qualify their statements with “could be” or “there is low risk but possibility of …” or similar. Instead we get “it will be..” as authorative. I fully understand how very difficult their job must be and am often impressed – but in the end it is all about probabilty, like the lottery.
I know they are trapped by needing to take a worst case position to prevent an error and risk being sued. But …,
I think the many repeats of poor Michael Fish being shown making his statement (presumably approved by his bosses?) was nothing short of deliberate torture. Worse than internet trolling of some celebrities. My heart went out to the poor man, he was only a part of it, it is a team job, and the rest have proved to be cowards hiding off screen.
I have made some quite serious mistakes in my time – haven’t you?
Let us all be rather more humane to the poor tormented man – how has he retained his sanity?
When did the
weather cutiesMet forecasters become so melodramatic?It is
emotional incontinenceanother curious need to shock, delight and entertain.In, the Wet Office; these blokes are riders on the public money gravy train, are merely civil servants doing a job. Their part, to informing the public of and about their “we think that, on the balance of probability what if scenarios and our best guess, statistically modelled prognostications”…………..it is, not some transitional career leading onto the RSC and to treading the boards, though most of them do act like luvvies, do they not?
However, what we do have is some sensationalizing of the language of forecasting argot. So that what were once described as “deepening lows” can be now hyped into ‘explosive cyclogenesis’ or shlock horror! a ‘weather bomb’……………cyclogenesis and extratropical storms blah, bloody blah.
The weather ain’t changed, aye but the language did and out of proportion come in hyperbole……….
Not for the first time…..once again in the recent case – of the Wet Office its Brain drained the life out of Brian – it did what all good Atlantic lows should [sometimes not admittedly “sting jet!”] do and ‘filled’ nicely just in time.
And let’s face it, anytime of the year in Britain we can face big storms but at this particular time of the year – Autumn drifting into Winter: you kinda expect ’em.
On the subject of over-hyped forecasts. https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/news/8510-winter-shocker-were-apparently-in-for-another-mega-freeze
Netweather use the GFS model which changes daily so I doubt it will work further out. And as for the chilly nights, I was bringing in firewood last night and wondering why since it was so warm outside. Not seen a frost down in Surrey so far.
Brian has the last laugh…
Blackpool ‘superpipe’ bent at 90 degrees by Storm Brian
A two-mile “superpipe” being installed to improve Blackpool’s bathing waters has been broken by Storm Brian.
United Utilities confirmed that a 250-metre section of the pipe had been “bent at a 90-degree angle” after gale-force winds hit the UK coast on Monday.
The water company said a new section has been ordered from a factory in Norway.
The 20,000-tonne pipe is part of the firm’s £200m plan to improve water quality in the Lancashire resort.
The pipe was first damaged by ex-Hurricane Ophelia last week that hit Ireland and the west coast.
A United Utilities spokesman said the pipe “almost snapped” as a result of the storm damage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-41737360
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