Positive signs but be wary of that ‘Barcebue Summer’

Despite repeated assertions that I’m merely a weather messenger – rather than a meteorologist – this has rarely prevented me from being on the receiving end of a ‘put-down’ if some particular forecast even goes slightly astray.

One of the few ‘comforts’ from my ‘local’ being closed down for business is that I’ve avoided weather castigations from a selection of grey beards waiting for even the slightest of slip-ups on the weather page.

The worst catastrophe of all is to predict a week or a weekend of sun that doesn’t arrive. When hopes and expectations are risen, people do get quite sore if the good news doesn’t materialise.

Such a thought crossed my mind last week, as all the positive weather symbols like clear suns spattered across the page, and a little fear lurked in a dark cavern of the mind with a simple message: What happens if this forecast doesn’t work out.

Billions of euro are spent all over the world in the development of weather research and modelling systems and yet given the myriad of factors that feed into forecasting, the predictions still get decidedly dodgy once a period of four to five days is passed.

For those weather boffins like myself, there is quite a fascinating array of information at the click of a screen from our own Met Éireann which has an excellent website for local weather information to giant corporations like ACCU and the MeteoGroup.

In my own tin-pot way, I rely on four main forecasting sources for reliable information – first and foremost Met Éireann which has the obvious major ‘plus’ of focusing just on Ireland; the BBC forecast now operated by MeteoGroup since 2015; the UK Met Office; and the yr.no Norwegian forecasting service.

While the advances of science, technology and modelling techniques have given us weather forecasts of quite strong reliability, like the ould codgers who question me about errant forecasts in the local bar, the predictions that go wrong are the ones that will always be remembered.

On April 30, 2009, the BBC in a news worldwide bulletin, delivered one of their most famous – well maybe that should be infamous – half-sentences when they proclaimed the UK was “odds on for a barbecue Summer” with “no repeats of the washouts” for the past two Summers.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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