BBC WEATHER CENTRE what a joke !!

uktim29

nickyhutch wrote: »

My a"£$ they do.

Lets see if its right then!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=0008

Actual text in brackets

Thur: Cloudy, Light showers, 21 degrees.

Fri: Sunny spells, 23 degrees. (Northwest Scotland and Northern Ireland will continue to be plagued by cloud and a little patchy rain. Otherwise it will be a dry day with warm spells of sunshine, after any early mist or low cloud clears away.)

Sat: Generally sunny, 25 degrees. (Another warm day with spells of sunshine developing in most places, after a fairly cloudy start. A little light rain may affect Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northwest England for a time.)

Sun: Generally sunny, 23 degrees.

Mon: Generally sunny, 23 degrees.

superscaper

uktim29 wrote: »

Do you want 100% accuracy, is that what your saying? It will probably never happen, after all, it's looking into the future.

I'd say it won't happen. I can't believe people on here are saying the that weather forecasts are pointless because they aren't completely accurate. It would be impossible, the weather is a chaotic system and the errors in ANY model become huge and completely overrun the actual data the further into the future you try to predict. This happens no matter how big a supercomputer they have. They do get more and more accurate but it's a law of diminishing returns, you need much more data and much better models and much bigger number crunching to get just a bit more accurate. Nobody can be certain about how accurate a forecast will be until it happens.
uktim29 has been quite right so far but I think some people are completely missing the point and misunderstand what's involved in weather forecasting. I'm no expert, I only briefly touched upon it in some numerics lectures in maths but that was enough to see just how difficult it is but just because we are only dealing with probabilities it doesn't mean it isn't useful.

nickyhutch

Not saying they're pointless because they aren't COMPLETELY accurate, I wouldn't expect that, but the other day I lookad at Alcudia. It said thunderstorms 3 days away. Next day I looked and the same day was predicted to be sunny and 34 degrees, not a spot of rain. How can things have changed so much?

My point is if it's only probabilities, and is so difficult, as you state, then why bother at all?

superscaper

nickyhutch wrote: »

My point is if it's only probabilities, and is so difficult, as you state, then why bother at all?

Because they usually do get it right (and I'm sure people will argue with that but it's selective memory, only couting when they do get it wrong). As I said it becomes more unpredictable the further into the future you try to forecast, it makes sense to revise that as the time to the event gets closer. As to why it can be such a shift in the actual prediction, I did say it was a chaotic system and I mean that in the literal mathematical definition.

marleyboy

The Butterfly effect seems relevant here, whereas the flap of a butterflies wings can create a hurricane elsewhere on the planet.

Has anybody heard of 'The Russian Woodpecker'??

superscaper

marleyboy wrote: »

The Butterfly effect seems relevant here, whereas the flap of a butterflies wings can create a hurricane elsewhere on the planet.

Has anybody heard of 'The Russian Woodpecker'??

The butterfly effect is basically a metaphor used for chaos theory so it's very relevant.

Can't say I've heard of the "Russian Woodpecker" but I'm busy wikiing (verb?) now.

marleyboy

Im not sure if its theory or fact, but theoretically Russian Woodpecker is a plausable weapon. scary prospect really.

dangeroussports

marleyboy wrote: »

The Butterfly effect seems relevant here, whereas the flap of a butterflies wings can create a hurricane elsewhere on the planet.

Has anybody heard of 'The Russian Woodpecker'??

Oh dear....not more of your weekend fetishes!:eek: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:



Only kidding. Cuddles.....