Betty–The Storm That Never Was
By Paul Homewood
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1692492075319628258
Following on from the heatwave that never was, the Met Office decided to hype Storm Betty. There was talk of half a month’s rainfall, maybe as much as 80mm:
The reality was much more mundane. Ballypatrick in N Ireland saw the most rain, 36mm, and the extremes in England and Scotland were much less than that:
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1693037948667646309
As for winds, they forecast gusts up to 70 mph in exposed places, and 55 mph widely:
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1692492075319628258/photo/1
Sure enough, they found a handful of extremely exposed sites. Capel Curig, for instance, sits at an altitude of 216m in the middle of Snowdonia:
https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1692780913619341821/photo/1
But down in the real world, the winds were a gentle breeze, even on that west coast of Wales, according to the Beaufort Scale:
But Gentle Breeze Betty does not have quite the same ring to it!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I’ve been wondering how the Experts, telling us how much rain the cyclone approaching SW California will dump, arrive at such precision…
I suppose it has something about how first impressions make deepest impressions, more likely to be remembered than later corrections ?
Well California is pretty big! I believe it’s one of the states that is larger than the UK, so its not that precise.
“…big…”
Area of California = 423,500 sq km
Area of United Kingdom = 248,500 sq km.
area of Colorado 269,837 Km2
Population: 5.82 million
I just love it here
The Weather Channel is a USA business. They sell advertising. They never saw a storm they didn’t like. They ♥ Hurricane Hilary.
The Babylon Bee speculates that all Hilary deaths will be labeled suicide.
At least it will give Californians second thoughts about voting for Hilary.
The forecast track has stayed remarkably consistent, with strong steering from a high over the Pacific. Winds have weakened a little sooner than forecast, but the wet aloft is quite well measured by satellites. What goes up must come down.
I suspect that like Maui, California will prove to have been ill prepared for the event, so there will be extensive damage and some deaths. Whether the lack of preparation will command attention, or whether it will be the predictable catastrophic climate attribution from Mann probably depends on your politics in the US.
I don’t think there is a way to prepare for heavy rain in the desert.
Yes, well, Hurricane Hillary… ‘Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.’ Depending on where the rain is being measured, there’s anywhere from 0.0″ to 0.75″; I woke up this morning and wondered where the rain was, because I couldn’t hear anything hitting the roof. There’s enough rain to make the roads wet, and to run off the roof, but the dangerous tropical storm we were all told to expect and hunker down for is conspicuous in its lack of threat.
Another pathetic attempt to hype up the weather and get attention. People have better things to do than endlessly fret about routine disturbances like that.
Have heart. How could you spook people with a forecast “rainy and windy as usual”?
Oooh Betty!
(Couldn’t resist)
+1
The Met Office have done another whoopsy
At least Betty isn’t strong enough to throw Pebbles.
When it comes to dodgy predictions there’s an interesting report in today’s Telegraph that claims Mayor Khan paid Imperial over £800M to produce a report to support his ULEZ scheme. Unfortunately, some scientist didn’t get the memo and wrote that London’s air quality was among the best in the world. So Khan got one of his staff to lean on the man’s boss to write a grovelling apology and admit that ULEZ was needed.
Mayor Khan a liar and a hypocrite? Surely not?
Yet another example of a mediocrity determined to impose on everyone what he wants regardless of any actual science or facts.
Mediocrity? I think you mean Mendacity.
Or, in the vernacular of the area, a thieving bar steward?
It’s the standard description of a politician DBB. Indeed it may be a required character trait by the selection committees.
Nobody wants to incur the Wrath of Khan. Where is (Admiral) James T Kirk when you need him.
£800k not £800M, but whatever the amount its all still a bit fishy.
The whole concept of ULEZ is open to question
http://Www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2021/11/16/londons-ultra-low-emission-zone-has-made-marginal-difference/
It was £800K not £800mn but still a lot of leverage.
Enough leverage for the Professor leading the study to bend over to accommodate the ‘suggestion’ from one of Khan’s lackeys to water down the findings. It must be so difficult to have the guts to hold to your principles when your grant provider wants you to lie. The word ‘lickspittle’ seems appropriate for such a principled academic.
If you search the ONS site for the stats regarding number of deaths attributed to traffic pollution in London, the answer for the decade 2009-2019 is …. one!
One death attributed to traffic pollution, and Khan is allowed to trash livelihoods and quality of life for hundreds of thousand households without being challenged.
And that one well publicised death due to pollution had a number of other causes on the death certificate so even the one death is not true.
BG News did an excellent cover on this yesterday evenig. It is much worse than
Harry suggests. Khan’s team actually dictated the words Imperial were to use to reverse their advice. One of the panel members, a fanatical runner, said he carries an analyser at all times and had just tested central London and it was the same as Perth – one of the world’s cleanest cities.
How clean is clean?
The Left has been using “cleaner air” as a cudjel against the people for 60 years. We cleaned it up 50 years ago. But they are still able to use “cleaner air” as a tool. Sixty year old play book still works.
So Khan lied in order to ‘prove’ the need for his tax impost? Well knock me down with a breath of clean London air. Who would have imagined such a thing??
It’s amazing that even GB News is still showing this non-storm 2 days on from the non-event !
Maybe they are just trying to rub in how rubbish the MO are, but I doubt it.
The MO need to look at the ‘Al gore ithms’ in their computer program; perhaps there’s a ‘gret blin’ in there somewhere ?
I used to have an e-mail ‘alert link’ to the MO for warnings but I’ve turned it off due to over-reporting of heavy drizzle.
I’ve noticed that GB News seem to have increased the frequency of their Met Office weather reports to every half hour. This seems totally unnecessary and very disruptive to the programmes. I wonder who has decided to do this?
It looks more and more that Alex Jones was right when he said trust nothing that comes out of government and its agents.
That observation doesn’t need Alex Jones’ help. Just read the U.S. Constitution and you will get a taste of the Founding Father’s disdain for government and its agents. Sadly, government, its agents, buckets of money and Leftist/Marxist media have blinded the common citizenry to that fundamental fact.
Is there a quota of “named storms” that has to be fulfilled for a DG to get their bonus? I remember years ago Julian Hunt, when he was DG, getting a bonus on the back of iffy improvements in forecast accuracy. A watchdog called him out on it but I don’t recall the consequences if any.
It’s yet another scam.
Check out “Named Storm Insurance Deductibles”.
So they can’t predict when it will be, where it will be, what it will be, if it will be?
Mystic Meg was better.
Frogs and pine cones – at least there is science behind how they react to the weather. Swallows too. Not cows though – they lie down because their legs are tired not because of rain.
I was flipping through the news channels , there are a lot of them.
I got to France news they were talking about something
But it was the ticker tape scrolling news at the bottom of the screen that caught my attention.
It said “Canada is fighting an apocalyptic fire”
The definition of apocalyptic is describing or prophesying the complete destruction of the world.
I think they are over egging the pudding to a great extent with all these gross exaggerations.
They have already used we only have five years to save the world with out even crediting Buck Rogers.
After planet boiling and apocalyptic where can they go next.
Hopefully as they get more ridiculous with there pronouncements people will believe them less and less.
Mean while at the end of the month the ULEZ expansion will make using your car and doing your job economically unviable for thousands.
Here in Wales most roads are going to be 20mph from September the 17th.
Making travelling by car and getting from A to B in time very difficult.
Expect lots of accidents from over and under taking cars trying to get round people traveling at 20mph.
Too funny I live on van isle and we have a bit of smoke if you look at both yellow knife and Kelowna you will see they are both on lakes with endless water. How can a fire burn with so much water available. Pumps are fairly Mobile but none seem to be available. This is hilarious to watch
They are predicting a 25% cut in bus services in Wales mainly due to reductions in grants but the introduction of the 20mph restriction was cited as another reason.
The Welsh police are particularly vigorous with their speed cameras so it will be interesting to see how many people have lost their licenses in 2 years time. We have a 20mph restriction in the next village to us and I find it very difficult to keep my speed down to that and spend more time watching my speedo than watching the road.
Not much to do with Storm Betty though.
It was pretty windy near Harlech and I can report that it blew the lid off my dustbin. Should I report that to Harrabin?
Harrabin would prefer you to stay in your house if it’s windy enough for your dustbin lid to blow off. If it’s raining, snowing or nice and sunny, he would also advise to stay cowering in your house in fear of the ‘climate crisis.’
You control people through fear, which is why the mainstream media always have some doom stories. It sells papers and gets online clicks, but for the elite it keeps the population in a state of panic which allows for easier manipulation e.g. storms, fires, viruses, terror attacks etc.
Turn the TV off and enjoy the rest of the summer.
H. L. Mencken said it all.
Good news is no news.
“If it bleeds it leads”
It was sudden climate change!!!
Can I sue them for lack of rain? I got a miserable 4mm in my gauge. It was breezy though – 4 to 5 but that was in gusts not continuous.
Standard procedure by the Met Office. They constantly issue pointless warnings to give the perception that the weather is going crazy due to global boiling And they continue to get away with it.
The Greenhouse Effect and its correct explanation.
Deducting for albedo, the Stefan-Boltzmann temperature average for Earth is 255K.
The centre of mass (of a column ) of average atmosphere is at an altitude of 5 km.
The average temperature of the atmosphere at that altitude is 255K.
Gravity creates a linear pressure gradient in the atmosphere of 1 bar at the surface and near 0 bar at the tropopause.
Adiabatic convection maintains molecular energy levels in rising and in falling air producing a linear temperature gradient coincident with air density.
The resultant average surface air temperature is 288K. Water vapour together with some trace gases raise the surface temperature from 255K to 288K by conduction and radiation from the gravitationally warmed surface air to the colder surface until equilibrium. That’s the Greenhouse Effect and its limit.
At equilibrium there is entrained system energy and through-going system energy.
The through-going energy is that which is the equal of that absorbed from the sun. It is radiated from the surface at an average 288K and from the atmosphere at around 255K at an average escape altitude of around 5 km. Due to Earth’s rotation, there is cyclical warming and cooling of 24 hours.
The entrained energy supports atmospheric volume, ocean water temperature and ground temperature. There is some small addition of energy from earth’s core into the oceans and surface. Due to Earth’s orbital and solar output changes, there is cyclical warming and cooling on decadal, centennial and millennial timescales.
For a reasoned explanation copy/follow to:-
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1flwe8ea5n79lxcrbaaqy/RvCscan.pdf?rlkey=0j62ez5mnlgkqv3bonk8pes6n&dl=0
Thank you for an excellent article. Now, if only our politicians and slithering serpents were intelligent enough to understand….!
Thank you. It took some time. Please feel free to pass it on.
Ah, the good old “its gravity whots dunnit.”
Er, no. It’s water vapour + other GG. But there’s a limit.
Dave,
The fundamental point of Mac’s analysis is the direct link between atmospheric thermal radiant emission temperature, which is a function of planetary Bond albedo coupled with solar radiant flux at Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun, and the mid-point vertical elevation of Earth’s atmospheric mass profile.
This cannot be a matter of chance given that the geological evidence of higher CO2 concentrations in the deep past is overwhelming, and yet life thrived in those times.
The only way this can work is if Earth’s thermal radiant opacity is a constant for a given atmospheric mass.
“…love [Colorado]…”
Provided you steer clear of the University of Col0rado? I read an article by a Conservative climate scientist who said that he really enjoyed his time in Boulder, because it was so easy to “wind up” the resident “Intelligentsia.” He said they are so far to the Left that they think of Trotskyites as dangerous, right-wing, Deviationists!
Mac,
Thanks for your PDF.
My first comment is this – Based on your Fig A, the centre of mass of the Earth’s atmosphere has a temperature equal to the radiative balance value of 255K
The absolutely critical point of your analysis is that this radiative flux balance point in the atmosphere is mass dependent and is not thermal radiant opacity dependent.
This links directly to the contention of Ferenc Miskolczi that the opacity of the atmosphere is mathematically fixed and so as one greenhouse gas concentration increases (CO2) the concentration of the dominant greenhouse gas (H2O) decreases thereby maintaining a fixed opacity value.
Therefore radiant opacity is not the climate control, instead it is atmospheric mass that is the Earth’s climate control.
Congratulations. Game over.
Philip, you are welcome to the pdf, please feel free to pass it on if you wish.
Yes, the average temperature of the troposphere (the bulk of the atmosphere) is the S-B derived radiative balance value of 255K, reduced slightly due to the surface 288K radiation via the atmospheric window. Being an average, it occurs at its centre of mass.
The surface temperature would also be 255K but for the fact that the gravitationally induced energy concentration in the surface air raises its entrained energy to be its equal in temperature at 288K.
The concentrations of various greenhouse gases are irrelevant but they must be present in sufficient quantity to reach radiative balance in the entrained energy between themselves and the surface. Other than that, yes, temperatures are atmospheric mass dependent.
The entrained energy is a function of the through-going energy: less or more sunlight will reduce or increase it.
Thanks Mac.
Your analysis can clearly be applied further and I will see where this takes me.
The deeper you delve the more tweaks come into play in the calculations. Albedo is not a constant (think polar snow/ice, equatorial ocean and cloud, desert and temperate land – and there important differences between reflection and absorption), the earth’s orbit introduces various parameters of variation (start with eccentricity and obliquity), pressure in the atmospheric column approximately follows a power law in the troposphere and an exponential in the stratosphere, water vapour modifies atmospheric behaviour significantly, calculations of radiation behaviour become highly complex and not modelled by Stefan-Boltzmann (see e.g. Wijngaarden & Happer), etc.
You are now discussing system tuning rather than the system itself.
As soon as you start digging down into the weeds you are going local and are moving away from the basis of this planetary analysis.
This is and always has been a discussion of global parameters.
Have raging fires always happened in BC, or is it that our MSM is only now reporting it? That said, as JSO cannon-fodder have no qualms about stopping ambulances reaching hospitals in London, I bet there are Canadians of their persuasion who are willing to set wild fires in furtherence of their cause.
The largest single fire in NA: Chinchaga – 1950
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchaga_fire
The wiki page mentions “The 1950 Great Smoke Pall”
I was in Western Pennsylvania at the time and remember the darkening sky and the red Sun, then blackness. People thought the end of the world was upon us. A few days later the news in the Pittsburgh papers explained.
Other Canadian Fires are listed:
List of fires in Canada – Wikipedia
The Capel Curig windspeed looks curious as it is not a particularly exposed location – a Fohn perhaps?
Where Capel Curig does often set records is in rainfall – it is indeed a very wet spot!
The Met Office are not the only hysterical fantasists. A couple of years ago on Channel 4 News, Matt Frie, a previously respected senior journalist, introducing a terrifying 5 minute video of complete nonsense weather reports, said “and for the first time since records began, there have been so many storms that the scientists have run out of names to call them!” There then followed Alex Thompson’s alarmist completely unverified absolute nonsense. There need to be some serious questions asked at a high level as to why this is happening. Surely Truth Matters?
Just another example of the increasing desperation of the alarmists. Here in Ireland, after a dismal cool summer, we’re being told that the new normal climate is now “permanent Autumn” – caused by – you guessed it – CAGW.
There is no mention of the fact that in June after a few weeks of sunny warm weather the same people were telling us that drought and soaring temperatures were the “New Normal” climate for Ireland.
Unfortunately millenials have the attention span and memory of goldfish thanks to social media but there are plenty of us over 40 who don’t and it’s up to us to keep calling out this sophistry.
My wife and I used to watch The Weather Channel when on hpliday in the USA as entertainment. Now the Met offic in the UK seeeks to emulate them.
The big difference is that in the USA there are always archived film of spectacular weather events to talk about. The Met uses forecasts as entertain ment. Presumably that is one reason why storms now have names; what next – slightly breeezy Betty, damp morning Agnes.
I’m in Snowdonia at the moment and we went for a walk in the hills to a reservoir. It was breezy but when we got to the reservoir the wind was funnelled between 2 mountains and it really picked up. I expect Capel Curig experienced the same scenario as is in between 2 lots of high hills, we would call them mountains in Kent, and the wind directions was down the valley. It’s nothing new up here as you can go from shelter to exposure pretty quickly and the volume of air has to go somewhere and be subject to the terrain.
Oddly enough I have just been watching Weather Watch Special . On Youtube. Philip Duncan. Meteorologist. He explains the track the storm will take. There is already a lot of rainfall in desert places. Monday 21 New Zealand time. Sunday 20 U S.
I’ve looked at Hillary on Windy and appears to have petered out pretty quickly with, what I would call, “normal” rainfall – so much for all the doomsters!!!
A bit late but I apologise for the inaccurate £800M. It should have read £800K.
Is there a link to the work done by the scientists that are saying that the London air pollution is not as bad Khan says?
I think there was a piece on the Daily Sceptic about it. The main conclusion was that they could not find any change in the level of PM2.5 following the introduction of the ULEZ which blows Genghis Khan’s justification for impoverishing people out of the water. From what I recall, a ban on diesel vehicles in Stuttgart produced the same result.
And Steve Milloy, junkscience.com, has shown that PM2.5 is harmless, anyway.
It’s all fake.
I would totally agree with you on that but that is a fight for another day. Currently we would achieve more by showing that their schemes to reduce ‘pollution’ do no such thing at great cost.
I only watch the weather ‘forecasts’, -the daily met-office’s larf-a-thon, because of lovely Lucy. She’s a delightful young lady, -sadly she would not be interested in some dreary 80 year old codger, and an ANTI-warmist at that. The tripe they all peddle!
But they succeeded. They planted in the public mind, Hurricane Hilary Cat 4, and today pictures of terrible floods and rock slides. The fact that it was nothing of the sort doesn’t matter, Hilary has made its contribution to the flow of propaganda that convinces most people.
Ta for the replies above.
On Saturday morning I drove down the A77, A75, amd M6 from north of Girvan bck to Derby. Having heard the hype in advance of Betty I chose that route in the hope of seeing some wild white horses. I’d even prepared myself by listening to James Cosmo reciting Tam O’Shanter. I was sorely disappointed in Betty, James Cosmo was excellent.
Ben, Thanks for the link: far more sensible that the climate / weather drivel that is continuous on our media. I always loved the lines “Wi tippenny ye fear nae evil, wi usquabae ye’ll face the deil” and found them to be very true.