I’ve written before about amateur weather forecasters predicting a new ice age – and one that is much colder than all the others, of course.
They were spectacularly wrong about last winter – so wrong, in fact, it would be like guessing “heads” on a coin toss and it coming up “tails”. I mean absolutely wrong. So I wonder if the absence of any such rubbish in the press this year has got anything to do with their overall embarrassment at that (or if it’s just that the Olympics has given the papers something else to talk about).
I’ve been getting hits over the last week which suggest people are looking for a current winter weather forecast again. They never learn. This excerpt is from Exacta (as it stands at the moment – some of these websites (though not specifically Exacta) have a habit of altering their forecasts as the future turns into the present):
I expect large parts of this winter to be very cold and exceptionally snowy in comparison to last year (forecasting confidence is quite high). I also expect these conditions to arrive earlier, rather than later this winter. There may even be the potential for some of the coldest/snowiest conditions in at least a century at times within the upcoming winter.
The problem with this is – and I have to repeat myself, so forgive me – is that they said similar about last year and got it totally and utterly wrong. TOTALLY AND UTTERLY WRONG! They weren’t even partly right.
Last year’s “forecast” amounted to a guess, so how can that possibly give anyone any confidence or faith in this year’s effort? What it comes down to is that even if THIS winter WAS the worst on record, it wouldn’t have been forecasted – it would have just been randomly guessed at.
EDIT 25/11/2012: I’d just like to point out that they haven’t said anything about the floods due to torrential rain that we’ve experienced recently. You’d expect any half-decent forecaster to catch something like extended periods of rain and flooding, wouldn’t you?