Over dramatic weather forecasting.

Totally agree Sago. Last Friday I ran through mental anguish and alternatives for a preplanned outing of importance. Decided to go ahead and attend. Not a problem.. No sign of serious weather anywhere in my rural and urban journey of 25 miles but the forecast warnings were seriously scary.

I suppose they are terrified of another Michael Fish “clanger” on the basis of “better safe than sorry”🤔

Yes, they do tend to over dramatize the forecast these days.
There are so many times when it's nowhere near as bad as they say. I think it might be due to the Michael Fish effect.

Ah...sorry... crossed.

Well we have had it all in last few days, snow, gales, lovely warm sunshine then a massive storm last night and now deluge. Dramatic indeed.

MawtheMerrier

I suppose they are terrified of another Michael Fish “clanger” on the basis of “better safe than sorry”🤔

Yes.
Snow - what snow?
Try telling that to those who were snowed in!

If you don't like the weather in the UK, just wait a minute. 😁

We have a Motorhome and an elderly friend often warns us of the weather forecast as we plan to go on our journey. It’s never been as bad as forecasted. I just say to her, “Same weather, different view.”

I suspect that forecasters now choose to "fail safe", and to talk it up rather than talk it down, as poor old Michael Fish notoriously did with the hurricane many years ago. I have no problem with this approach, as I'd rather be prepared for the worst, even if it doesn't quite arrive as forecast.

Well, they didn't warn us about the whiteout we got yesterday, sunny morning then heavy snow, which is not melting today.
I worry that the warnings will be so over the top we ignore them and get caught out, we have plans for today if we can get out of the village up the steep hill. We would have made the appointments for another day if we had used our local knowledge and intuition.

Never easy to see into the future. Better forewarned to be careful and rearrange plans if possible- maybe, especially given the nhs situation.

well, it doesn't mean everywhere does it! when they forecast snow you then need to look at the map of the uk to see where and if it covers your area or not!

I'm glad for warnings better safe than sorry and we can all look up detailed local forecasts if we wanted use our own judgement.

lemsip

well, it doesn't mean everywhere does it! when they forecast snow you then need to look at the map of the uk to see where and if it covers your area or not!

Well the map didn't cover our area and it didn't last week and we didn't get any. It's a no, no, win situation. We did look at the map we're not that daft the TV did not correlate with the local one.

Media hype a lot of things up nowadays.

I agree that if they’re not careful, such dire warnings which tend to come to very little for the majority of the country, will start to be ignored, (rather like the tale of the little boy who cried wolf just a bit too often) when one day, it might be spot on, and paying attention will be very important. I feel it’s not the weather forecasters per se, but rather the media reporters who hype it up and just love to suggest impending doom and gloom - they do this with so many things, creating unnecessary panic.

Lucky to dodge the snow. We live just off the A1 a few miles north of Peterborough and had 10 cm of snow in 2 hours. Yes it melted quite quickly but caused chaos for a while.

If you read The articles the headlines are attached to I usually find they've omitted to put something like at high levels in the highlands of Scotland in the headline.

How long before the hottest summer on record is forecast

We had 4" of snow last Friday, not fit to.go.out, but mostly gone by late Saturday

It was suggested we may well have “another summer like last year’s” this coming summer, on the BBC News channel last night, goose1964!

Since the BBC stopped using the Met Office for it’s forecasts in 2018, I’ve noticed their forecasts have frequently been inaccurate and unreliable.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Weather#:~:text=On%206%20February%202018%2C%20BBC,weather%20information%20for%2094%20years.

When I got up last Friday there was a snow blizzard blowing, true to the forecast the previous night. I immediately cancelled my lunch booking, quite expecting the weather to persist all day. Left me feeling a proper wimp when the sun came out and the snow disappeared before lunch.

The media overdramatize everything including news and weather, it’s what they do so why not forecasts, the warning of storms at least give you the opportunity to prepare if you want to.

DH and I have a code phrase for over-egged reporting (often the weather and occasionally sickly stories about pets)

"BUT is it ATROCIOUS" yet?

If you work at it you can drag 'atrocious' out into 5, 6 or 7 syllables. And it passes the tine.

Weather forecasting is no longer accurate on most days, ,so I tend to use my judgement instead of listening to the forecast.

If we are going out of our local area, I check two or three sites online, which sometimes clarifies things a bit, but not always.