Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Snow joke

Warm and humid Atlantic air is about to collide with cold continental air over the British Isles, causing heavy snowfall through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. As ever, the Met Office's supercomputer simulations are now so accurate that they are able to predict exactly where the snow will fall: "The band of heavy snow is most likely to affect southern Wales, the Midlands and central and southern England, including London." In other words, the snow might fall anywhere South of Northern England. In fact, the Met Office's supercomputers are so impressive that they would like members of the public, here

www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/observations/snowreport.html

to tell them where the snow has fallen, so that they can accurately describe where the snow has fallen, after it has fallen. As the blurb says, "Snow is forecast for certain areas during the next few days. Some places could well see significant falls of snow, but many of us will see very little as the distribution of snow can vary enormously from place to place." Hilarious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Predicting' the past is so much easier, I find. Try me. It's uncanny. For example, I am absolutely, 100% sure there was no snow in Dublin today. Am I right? You bet. This reminds of the traffic reports on the radio at rush hour. I sometimes shout at the radio in frustration at being told that I'm stuck in a 20 minute tailback. Well, thank you for letting me know - I thought I was on the beach in Hawaii sipping a pina colada.

Gordon McCabe said...

Indeed. Most weather 'forecasts' on the TV actually begin with a retrodiction of what's already happened during the day.

Didn't Snow Patrol win four awards at the Meteor Ireland Music Awards in Dublin this week? That's close.

Anonymous said...

You've been blessed with the gift too, Gordon. Not sure how many awards, but that sounds close alright. Afraid I don't follow popular music, but saw something in the paper to that effect I think.