The Heatwave That Never Was!!
August 18, 2023
By Paul Homewood
Can the Met Office become an even bigger laughing stock than they are already now?
Two days ago the clowns at the UKHSA issued a Heat Alert for today, following Met Office forecasts of temperatures reaching 28C. In itself, this was absurd, as 28C is hardly life threatening.
But today arrived, and most of us were busy trying to keep warm under grey skies and rain. If you were lucky enough to find a bit of sunshine, you might have got temperatures of 23C.
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1692514179821752804
How on Earth can the Met Office have got it so wrong?
Maybe in future the Met Office might try getting its weather forecasts right, instead of pumping out global warming propaganda.
82 Comments
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Keep up the good work exposing these twits.
These forecasters are unusually brave – they forecast weather 48 hours in advance. Most alarmists warn of climate 48 years in advance ..
Och, the bbc and the Met Office, … ( thought the forecasts came from another Company or when did it change back ? ) I HArdly listen to it nowadays: watching some graphics ( Sat. Fotos ideally ) but really have found it all just totally WRONG up here in Inner M Firth. – on ALL COUNTS. Wind comes earlier than forecast, Likewise periods of rain, or hot / cold , or it coms LATER, or not at all. Just Hit the RED Button. Watch Foreign Sat Progs as they tend to show and explain ( try to ) the developing flow. OH mann, Just happen ot catch Kirsteen telling us that the World’s Pipeband Championship will be experiencing many Tears and Sparks tomorrow. Good Luck to the RACPAD team.
The BBC now uses Meteo Group for its forecasts but you can get the MetOrifice on GB News.
Alarm starvation syndrome has set in.
When dogma overcomes doubt, when belief trumps proof, and politics triumphs over prudence then we end up with carpet-baggers and chancers in place of those who should govern us. Whatever happened to truth, principle, accuracy and facts?
In my youth (long ago!) I read that the Roman Empire took 400 years to collapse: we must be near a quarter of the way there by now. It becomes more and more evident that we really need a new Heracles (Hercules to some): he would have his work cut out to clear this Augean stable of ignorance, corruption and mendacity.
Tacitus describes some aspects of the “Fall” and Marcus Aurelius saw every aspect of poor human behaviour without ever logging on…I recommend both to all.
Aurelius was a great visionary and leader – we have no one of his ilk in charge anywhere globally
…without ever logging on: yet his words outlive him to this day. Unlike my/our puny contributions. Thanks.
186no: Please note, my ‘thanks’ was not meant as a snark comment. I was grateful for your comment.
HP, no offence taken in the slightest; everything hinges on the translation but it has taken until my 6th/7th decade to realise our civilisation (?) has not exactly advanced with the march of technology and the ancients remain far far far ahead of us in the 21st century.
It is humbling to see the incredibly beautiful red and black pottery and to read the philosophers of Bronze Age Greece.
They truly were far ahead of today’s civilisation.
We are fortunate to be able to read and see their works today. I wonder if any from our era will stand such a test of time.
I just don’t understand how they are allowed to get away with this. Several years ago the MetOffice was touting their new supercomputer … I remember this that just meant they’ll get the wrong forecast faster.
The most perfect example of GIGO. And they expect people to believe their forecasts for 30 years hence?
“The most perfect example of GIGO.”
Wut? Not even close. Do you even know what GIGO means?
That’s not the problem.
I do not. Please, tell us, quick and plainly, what does GIGO mean?
The first (?) rule of computing : Garbage in, Garbage out
Thank you for the reply. I was aware of the axiom, but not the acronym.
Garbage in, garbage out. Crap input.
There is no f(*&ing problem with the input; the problem is with the software. It will produce crap, regardless of input. Wonderful, perfect input will still produce crap.
I see this ignorant GIGO assertion frequently. It’s so ignorant it pisses me off.
The software includes many tweak-able parameters that also constitute inputs in the more general sense.
I prefer “Garbage In, Gospel Out.”
Odd how these comments – replies to devonblueboy – are not in chronological order.
The problem is we have to use web browsers rather than e-mail clients, thus the replies could be anywhere. There really ought to be an option to subscribe to an e-mail distribution list.
>>Odd how these comments – replies to devonblueboy – are not in chronological order.
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC Working Group I: The Scientific Basis, Third Assessment Report (TAR), Chapter 14 (final para., 14.2.2.2), p774.
I wonder if the Met Office were instructed to incorporate CO2 levels in their forecasts in order to get funding for their super computer. Maybe our Weather and Climate doesn’t care much about CO2.
Should be renamed to the Meth Office?
Or the Meh Office?
Myth Office
or Met Orifice
Winner!
We are in a state of mind where Government departments think that lies are acceptable and that contesting them is unpatriotic.
I refuse to be in that state of mind – I will always evaluate the truth, the facts by studying all the inputs – if some inputs are censored because ‘they’ do not want me to know them, then my default position is to disbelieve what ‘they’ are telling me
Just weeks ago after a very small period of warm weather the eco-loons labelled a ‘heatwave’ the Met Office issued a statement saying the UK could expect more heatwave summers in future. Imagine if they had said this back in 1976 after the most recent heatwave summer! Nearly 50 years on we have not even been close to a 1976 summer.
Very suspicious that the alarmists simply ignore 1976 and of course the 1930s in the USA
I don’t think weather forecasting has been so poor for a long time. When a group of us hill-walking friends go to Scotland twice a year, we all start anxiously scanning the forecast as soon as it appears 14 days out, and emails fly around with suggestions as to what we might climb, taking the weather into account. It changes on a daily basis, and the weather we encounter often isn’t even the weather that was forecast the day before.
All this failure and decreasing accuracy as the Met Office obtains ever more expensive computers.
Unfortunately, the Met Office has joined the alarmist brigade, hence why they colour maps red & purple, give bad weather storm names, introduce silly heat alerts – it’s now alarmism before weather – just use another less alarmist source
I have noticed much the same – forecasts seemed to be better 30 – 40 years ago, though it is hard to measure statistically. My suspicion, admittedly without evidence, is that too much reliance is now being put on computer models rather than experienced human meteorologists.
I agree, and these so-called models have been deliberately skewed towards ‘creating’ the bogie man of the climate grift. We are being lied to.
“forecasts seemed to be better 30 – 40 years ago”
The difference may be that they didn’t try to forecast a week out. Current forecasting is very good for 2-3 days, but then accuracy falls off sharply. There’s no asterisk on that forecast for 7 days out, noting that their 7 day accuracy is only 30%.
They outkick their coverage today.
Y0u’re absolutely right, and here’s your evidence!
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
~ Prof. Chris Folland ~ (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)
Mark – have you seen the very sophisticated weather forecasting equipment outside the Ben Nevis Inn? It consists of a stone hanging from a piece of rope and a notice saying something like:
If the stone is swinging it is windy
If the stone is white it is snowing
If you can’t see the stone it is foggy
That stone needs an agent, and should be on television.
billydick007 – You could try it. I believe the last agent of some stones did rather well and it is a lovely part of the world if you have not been there.
TV Weather Man were the ORIGINAL Fake News, “Stay tuned for updates on what could be the most recent Storm of the Century. There is very scary weather way, way out there, that might just possibly get close to a town near you. This could be the next Big One, we don’t know, maybe, we’ll see–Film at eleven.” Add to this clown show the Met Office.
I have purged myself of all these hysterical, incompetent climate alarmist outfits and I feel great
Propaganda can only work if you allow yourself to be soaked in it – free yourself, seek media etc that sits comfortably with your beliefs and values, join groups that share your reasoned debate, with zero bias and most importantly, ensure your family & friends etc are protected from the constant barrage of negative spin alarmism
I read a book recently – it was inspirational, it’s themes echoed so similar to events occurring today – it was a spiritual journey of how evil manipulates and controls to such a degree, you lose sense of your very own being, your place in the Universe – it highlighted that no matter how tyranny crushes your hopes, the human spirit will always endure, in the face of significant odds, and manage to rise above the deceit, the coercion, the complete control of your acts, your thoughts, your life – it was of course 1984 by George Orwell – what a visionary George was, if only he could see his work of fiction being acted out literally now by the dark blob
There is an unconscious part of EVERY human being which immediately has to believe (or, at least, half-believe) what ANY other human being says, however maliciously motivated or logically absurd. Even if it only LOOKS like a human being – when it is really an abstract social machine, such ‘the Met Office’ or ‘Big Brother,’ a sort of epi-phenomenon.
This tendency exists, presumably, because it was once advantageous to accept warnings without thinking. “Once,” when the warning could only come from our immediate family. “Once,” when we were living still much like like the chimps, and when any one of us suffering from “wolf crying” by a fellow, and hence losing faith in the ways of the group, entailed a grave blow to the survival of our shared genes.
We are no longer small bands of well-adjusted, roaming; hunter-gatherers; and instead we daily hear the moaning of eight billion unreliable shadows every time we are foolish enough to communicate at long distance. No wonder the more thinking of us stumble and fall.
“…roaming; hunter gatherers;”
Typo.
“roaming, hunter-gathers;”
“There is an unconscious part of EVERY human being”
Not every human. Yankees are different.
Southerners are friends with everybody they meet. Until if the person pisses them off. And we’ll remember it forever. We hold grudges.
Yankees are afraid of everybody. SCARED of everybody they meet.
Gamecock can identify Southerner or Yankee just walking down the street. Southerners say, “Hi,” Yankees look away.
Yesterday was told that in London temperatures ‘might’ rise as high as 30deg. Today warned to expect rain of Biblical proportions. Yesterday it was a scorching 24deg. and today a mild drizzle, but never mind still got tomorrow’s epic gale to come.
Amazing that they know what the weather is going to be in 2050, absolutely amazing.
This is getting ridiculous. Every time we have a stiff breeze or a hot day we get a warning about health implications. How long is the public going to put up with this nonsense?
We will be subjected to the climate grift for as long as the climate grifters remain in office and the money keeps flowing in. We get what we tolerate.
But how do we get them out of office given the absence of elections?
>>We will be subjected to the climate grift for as long as the climate grifters remain in office
Elections are irrelevant now as all power has gone to pressure groups, Civil servants and NGOs. On top of that we have no real difference between the 3 main parties except on the question of degree.
Not here in the US, Mike. But the extent of Democrat cheating has reached the point where it matters. Perhaps it used to be 25%.
It is literally impossible that Joe Biden got 81 million votes.
K. Use of angle brackets mistaken for HTML.
“Perhaps it used to be less than 5%, but now it’s greater than 25%.”
St.Swithins is better at predicting the weather than the Met
From 03/01/2010:
“Yet, while many months ago he and several of his rivals correctly forecast a pre-Christmas freeze, the organisation that told us last year to prepare for a ‘barbecue summer’ was getting it wrong again.
This is our own famous Met Office, which last September confidently predicted a warmer than average winter for Britain. Tell that to Eurostar passengers stuck in the Channel Tunnel for 18 hours before Christmas, the breakdown of their trains blamed on the coldest weather for 15 years.
Spinning a coin could have given the same result – not one you would expect from an organisation that spends nearly £170million a year, has 1,500 staff and a team of scientists operating a £30million supercomputer capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, with a carbon footprint the size of a small town.
Yet even with this brand-new computer in action since last August, on December 10 the Met Office predicted that it was ‘more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998’. That prediction stands unchanged.
How could the Met Office be so wrong, both about its barbecue summer and the mild winter? And could the answer to that question have anything to do with its remarkable transformation in recent years?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html
In May 1976 the UK Met Office also forecast a cooler than average Summer. From the third week in June to the end of August it was hot and dry, surpassing most summers before and since.
I remember it well!
Winter finished late, and within a couple of weeks I was fortunate enough to have plenty of time to ride round on my BSA A10.
Went to Knebworth rock concert and saw the Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd perform their definitive version of Free Bird, baking in the sun.
Best summer ever!
I am envious; you saw the Stones, live, in 1976. Jones was dead and Mick Taylor had moved on, reportedly running for his life. Who was was playing, Ronny Wood? Good story.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/knebworth-1976-a-marathon-affair/
All we seem to get now are a litany of storms, all in a teacup!
My daily gentle bike ride around the local unchanging rural Estate consists of 4 miles SW and return 4 miles NE.
This year up to the end of June easterlies dominated the weather it was often not nice pedalling into a chill wind on the way back.
But I knew the westerly wind would return, but when was the question, and the Met Office were of no help with this as they are totally focused on “hottest evah” propaganda.
The westerlies returned for the Summer, as they often do, and I don’t have to pedal so hard on my way back.
The rape and cereal harvest has been interrupted by rain this year but the Estate contractors have succeeded in getting it all in eventually.
However the maize crop is getting a bit wet as not quite ready, harvest is usually a muddy affair most years.
Their forecasts have been running hot for years – far more often are they too warm than too cold. Is it deliberate or just bad models? Difficult to know but I suspect they take the upper ranges of their forecasts now because they believe it should be hot.
We have had similar problems in SW France all summer – forecasts of very hot days 5-7 days out that then decrease and turnout 3-5 degrees lower. We were forecast 37 for Friday 5 days ago, ended up 34 at most. 2 days ago Monday and Tuesday were forecast to be 37 and 38. Today its 36 for both days. But everyone believes really, really hot because of the forecast, not reality.
It’s my belief that weather extremes are hyped for as long as possible in forecasts so that people think it happened.
Are journalists joining in the clamour because they fear missing out, FOMO?
I think that’s right. They hype the 10% scenario that’s the hottest – people don’t understand that the forecasts are a series of scenarios, not one forecast. That convinces people it’s hot, even when the out-turn is not. Journalists are just those who have bought in to the doom-mongering, so see it as hot even when it is not.
Paul Homewood: “Can the Met Office become an even bigger laughing stock than they are already now?”
Penny Endersby and Stephen Belcher: “Hold our beers.”
Paul, I am sure you have not missed is the propaganda value of that ridiculous 28deg C warning as if it is worthy of note. People will remember it because they will think somewhere else experienced that temperature. The Met Office are seen as an august and trust worthy body so people will listen to them. This will sensitising the large part of the population who will now think 28deg C is noteworthy not as something to enjoy during our year of otherwise miserable or nondescript weather, but as something BAD.
Will they be brought to book for this? Not on your life. Your best bet is to get on GB news or Sky Australia news and get them to question the Met office…. “you said an absolute number, the actual was 3 degrees lower so why the discrepancy”? Important to get them to admit that there is a significant error margin in their predictions which then begs the question, “why are you only promoting one extreme of the possible range? For what reason”? We are of course drawn to that reason based on their previous.
Sun is out, about 4mm of rain in the gauge….so what happened to our massive thunderstorms and month’s worth of rain that the MetOrifice were warning of yesterday?
In other news….Germany is staking its future on hydrogen to power what little will be left of its industry. However, RWE is showing good commercial sense by insisting that it will only build hydrogen plants if the taxpayer picks up the bill.
Someone with the skills to do some automated website scraping ought to capture Met Office forecasts and actual outturn and calculate the differences. One or two dozen sites should be enough to build a reasonable picture across the country. Presenting them on animated choropleth maps could be quite entertaining. How would you pick the colour scheme? Ice blue for high temperature forecasts that didn’t pan out, and deep red if they forecast a freeze that didn’t happen.. Desert yellow where they forecast heavy rain that didn’t fall (click and you get Dylan – A hard rain’s gonna fall), deep sea blue where the heavens opened over their forecast drought.
Perhaps something on renewables output for wind and sunshine.
Comparison with other forecasters would also be interesting.
I did this a few years ago and compiled a spreadsheet that showed a very large number of too hot forecasts and very few too cold forecasts. But it’s a bit tedious to do.
“Can the Met Office become an even bigger laughing stock than they are already now?” They have barely even started! After all we are apparently now on our second named storm ofAugust.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66554592
At about 22:19 this evening, at the beginning of the weather forecast on BBC, it was said that in places today reached 26 degrees which was described as “very pleasant”. Only yesterday it was suggested that 28 degrees would be dangerously hot.
They do not see the stupidity of thei comments.
Two days ago I left home at about 8am and it was 16.5 degrees. On my return a houir or so later it was ober 20 degrees. The increase in just a short time was four or five times the 1.5 degrees over 100 years which we are told to be fearful about. Nuts!
It’s been like that since time immemorial with temperatures going up and down by more than the infamous 1.5° multiple times every day. Normal people accept the facts of life, but alarmists panic about natural occurrences and start inventing things to tax and ban.
As an aside, the “low” where I am today was 19° and the “high” 31°. It might reach 34° tomorrow, but there will still be that “low” of around 19°
That’s nothing! For my bit of SW France, the forecast shows 38 on Wednesday and 22 on Saturday! 14 degrees in 4 days.
You know what frightens me? The utter lack of self awareness and humility that the Met Office displays. They confidently predict weather a patterns a month ahead (anyone remember their ultra hot end of August life threatener predicted three weeks ago?) with fiery graphics and all? Did it happen? Nope. There prediction of this week basically predicting warm summer weather in the next tow days? Barely got it right.
And yet – not a problem predicting storms and disasters 30 years from now.
No sense at all of the utter fraud they project? This is what passes for “scince”?
How fortunate we are the same ‘experts’ were not in charge June 1944 or we could all be speaking German?
Nature will take care of itself always has & always will