Saturday 3 October 2009

Weathermen - What's the B****y point of them?

Had a lovely day out with SWMBO yesterday, (Friday), and managed to get to bed at about 2.30am. As today is Saturday, we don't have carers come in to help me get SWMBO ready in the morning, and I do what they normally would to get her showered, massaged and dressed. We also have breakfast in bed, usually bacon butties or sausage sarnies and watch a film or something that we have recorded earlier in the week and not had time to watch yet. So, you can picture the scene of domestic bliss that we have - usually, but not today!


Half-way through the bacon butties the phone rang, and our neighbour asked us if we would like our gazebo back! He had been sitting in his conservatory enjoying the peace and quiet of a cup of tea and the newspaper, when a gust of wind picked up our gazebo, pulled the stays out of the ground and sent it sailing over our 2 meter fence and his even higher summerhouse. He told us that it performed a perfect somersault over the summerhouse knocking the pinnacle off and landed, upright if slightly bent, right in the middle of his lawn! The gazebo is a metal frame covered with a weather-proof top and heavyweight sides that, all in, weighs just over 42 kilos.

Now, I can fully appreciate that strong winds could do this, but that's where the title to this piece comes in. The B****y weatherman yesterday afternoon said that today would be "a day of mild temperatures, a few occasional sunny spells and a light breeze". We actually had a coldish day, with one sunny spell of about 10 minutes and a howling gale and in the village, we have had a tree blow over, a few large boughs in the roads, a couple of fences down and rubbish bins rolling down the streets. Right, this is most definitely NOT caused by a light breeze, and if we'd been given a decent forecast a lot of this could have been avoided.

The National Weather Bureau, or whatever it's called these days, needs a damn good kick up the A***. They have spent millions, if not tens of millions, of pounds on satellites, computers and God knows what else, yet most of the time can't even tell us with any accuracy the weather we had yesterday! How difficult can it be, given the technology that is available today, because 2o-odd years ago when I was in the RAF, we used to have more accurate forecasts. They needed to be as accurate as possible due to the flying activities that were going on, but the equipment that provided the information back then would only be found in a museum these days.

Maybe they should get it out again and give it to the weatherman/woman?

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