Evelyn Cusacks forecast tonight

Red Nissan

wretcheddomain wrote: »

Stop saying 'predict'. Birds don't sit perched on trees contemplating the weather making accurate 'predictions'. They respond to seasonal changes because the instinct is such that if they don't they'll probably be dead if they don't make such a migration.

They will alter their behaviour and depart earlier or linger longer, some year they may even over winter without migrating.

It's regional specific.

DOCARCH

Red Nissan wrote: »

They will alter their behaviour and depart earlier or linger longer, some year they may even over winter without migrating.

They are responding to past weather!

BTW, pigs can see the wind...but unfortunatley they cannot tell us!!! :P

Red Nissan

Onthe3rdDay wrote: »

Met Eireann _ over the last few years ME have been too far out too often.

I'd pretty much agree, I'd say they've been far too cautious and IMO, they take weekends, holy days and bank holidays off! :P

Red Nissan

Leroy42 wrote: »

, but to use a paid for segment on National TV to try to PR your industry against percevied competition seems a little, well immature really..

It does, doesn't it, for me personally, a person who does NOT use Met Eireann's forecasts, this drivel only reinforces my decision to use other services.

Onthe3rdDay

snowstorm2013 wrote: »

This furore over Evelyn simply stating scientific fact is crazy. She was telling the Irish people that realistically the weather cannot be predicted more than 5 to 10 days in advance. No one doubts that trends in seasonal weather may sometimes be detected up to a fortnight or so in advance but any accuracy is not possible until it falls into the 5 -10 day range. The Donegal postman has called a white Christmas for Donegal. Co. Donegal is well positioned and has plenty of high ground so yes there is a high probability that snow will fall but does that constitute a white Christmas as the vast bulk of the population will not experience snow? The media should be approached by Met Eireann and told to stop publishing/promoting nonsense from such people as they promote anxiety among many people.... my cousins grand uncle lives at 300 metres in donegal... an isolated location and is already hyped up, not in a good way, about this winter. "The postman said this, the postman said that..... ", I asked him why does he and neighbours believe a postman and he answered" sure he has to be right he was on the television"!!

Indeed I'd agree with you that many will be swayed by what they see on TV. However, there's a major problem here. I'm in Donegal a lot of the time and was there for about 18 months during 2010 into 2011. Met Eireann were very wrong a lot of the time, I remember being told on the RTE radio One forecast about a thaw coming in and it didn't go much freezing were I was for another week, in fact it got colder. Now I don't take notes and dates but too often You'd hear the ME forecast and what had been happening that day and it resembled nothing that was happening on the ground.

Being in a car with four others with them laughing at the weather forecast that ME were putting out is actually A little embarrassing. Durning the time above in Donegal other weather services were accurate most of the time.

Now if there's an old man on top of a hill and he looks out the window and Evelyn is telling him one thing and the postman is telling him another and the postman is right, why wouldn't he believe the postman, especially when this has happened more than once.

Most people I've met in Donegal, regard the postman like they regard Horoscopes. But they don't beilive "that weather from Dublin" They go to other sources such as the BBC or if they're online a whole number of other services.

RobertKK

Before weather models and short or long range forecasts, people had to prepare for the weather that might come.
Like in 1947, in January before the snow, my tells me the wind had been coming from the east for a good while and he always says nothing good comes from the east in winter, as a person who doesn't like the cold I agree.
Anyway no met eireann or postmen, or Ken ring, he feared what the east wind would bring so stacked up on firewood, brought it home to the house with the horse, when the snow came he and his parents and siblings had firewood when any wood that was around was under several feet of snow.

The point is whatever anyone says, you should be prepared for the weather and then you need not concern yourself with longer range forecasts which are mostly inaccurate.
The met offices are dependent on the weather models, we know they shift and change with each run. So it is unlikely they will be able to forecast any longer than a set number of days, anytime soon.
Yet they do guess, we had the UK Met and their summer scorcher prediction which turned into a wash out.
Whether a postman, Ken Ring or a met office, making a long term forecast prediction is a very risky business and should not be taken seriously, more as a bit of fun, a bit like the Daily Express and their weather headlines.

Snickers Man

Colonialboy wrote: »

And I wouldnt be going around using Carl Sagan quotes as some kind of backup for my arguement if i were her. Theres a man who ignored James Lovelocks early hypothsis on earth feedback loops whenit was presented to him on a plate and wasted much of his career on bio-astronomy.

Wasn't there a story concerning Sagan some years back, when he was still with us, that he got wind of the fact that Apple Computer (as it then was) was developing a new computer under the project code name Sagan and objected to the use of his name without proper authorisation and compensation.

Even when it was explained to him that this was an internal code word and not a name under which the company would actually market the product, if it ever even got that far, he still complained. So Apple changed the working project title from Sagan to BHA.

However they later let it slip that BHA actually stood for Butt Head Astronomer, which displeased Mr Sagan even more and so he set his lawyers on Apple again.

Guy had no sense of humour.

Akrasia

relaxed wrote: »

As a side note animals can predict the weather to a point.

Birds flying south for example shows the winter is coming.

Fish jumping in the river probably means a balmy summers evening.

Cows in a line against a ditch in a field with their arses stuck out usually means its pissing rain and they are sheltering.

High flying swallows mean good weather.

It's not a prediction to 'predict' what's already happening

Animals react to the weather, they don't predict it.
Some animals may be more sensitive to pressure changes or temperature changes and may seek shelter before a storm because they can feel it coming, but that's no different to a human looking at the clouds and seeing big black rain clouds heading towards them and 'predicting rain'

Akrasia

Leroy42 wrote: »

So let me get this straight. A weather forecaster basically admitted that they have no idea what is going to happen more than 10 days in advance and have a fairly uninspiring record on actual daily weather forecasts themselves has a go at amatuers for being less tthan reliable.

This might have some credit if she and her whole industry were not funded by millions of taxpayers money to basically tell us what happened today and have some vague notions of what may happen tomorrow (unless something different happens).

Professional meteorologists have saved countless lives through using scientific methodology to predict weather with a degree of accuracy that is less than 100% but still high enough to give reliable signals to mariners and farmers and people in the path of storms and extreme weather events to allow them to take appropriate action to protect themselves and their property.

'Long range forecasters' on the other hand are giving advice to people which if they followed it, could put their lives and livelihoods in danger.

If a farmer made decisions about what levels of feed he needs for the winter on the basis that a 'long range forecaster' predicted a very mild winter, and then he runs out of food for his animals, that would have a very real damaging effect on his livelihood.
Giving people false information about future events that they have no way of knowing robs them of the chance to do prudent planning of their own affairs.

If a pension fund manager tells me that he will guarantee 15% annual return for my pension, If i believe him, I will save on the basis that I will get this 15% return. if it turns out I only got a 2% return, when it comes to retirement, I may not have enough saved to meet my expenses. If the pension fund manager said he could not guarantee any set return, and it depends on the market, then I would be able to make a better more informed decision about how to fund my retirement.

People making confident predictions have a duty of care to those who make decisions on the basis of those predictions. If you exaggerate your accuracy or the confidence of your predictions, you are defrauding people.

The professional meteorologists are open and honest when they state that they are less and less confident about their weather predictions the further out they go and they generally refuse to make any prediction at all beyond 10 days. This is a virtue, not a shortcoming. It would be worse for them and for us if they pretended that they knew more than they do.

Red Nissan

Akrasia wrote: »

Professional meteorologists .

I will stop you right there. met Eireann do provide a paid for professional service. This is not what is broadcast on the RTE News/Weather bulletins.

Red Nissan

Akrasia wrote: »

'Long range forecasters'

Weather patterns are set and events change those patterns in time. A long range forecast can be made even years in advance. However, that forecast cannot be detailed.

A set of influences indicate severe weather, what actually arrives may be cold and the odd severe day rather than an entire severe winter. In general if severe weather is determined the arriving weather will be poor, it will rarely if ever be [the opposite] 'good' weather but not as severe as forecast.

Akrasia

Onthe3rdDay wrote: »

Indeed I'd agree with you that many will be swayed by what they see on TV. However, there's a major problem here. I'm in Donegal a lot of the time and was there for about 18 months during 2010 into 2011. Met Eireann were very wrong a lot of the time, I remember being told on the RTE radio One forecast about a thaw coming in and it didn't go much freezing were I was for another week, in fact it got colder. Now I don't take notes and dates but too often You'd hear the ME forecast and what had been happening that day and it resembled nothing that was happening on the ground.

Being in a car with four others with them laughing at the weather forecast that ME were putting out is actually A little embarrassing. Durning the time above in Donegal other weather services were accurate most of the time.

Now if there's an old man on top of a hill and he looks out the window and Evelyn is telling him one thing and the postman is telling him another and the postman is right, why wouldn't he believe the postman, especially when this has happened more than once.

Most people I've met in Donegal, regard the postman like they regard Horoscopes. But they don't beilive "that weather from Dublin" They go to other sources such as the BBC or if they're online a whole number of other services.

A lot of this post is just confirmation bias
It is popular to 'blame the weatherman'
There's a culture in ireland of discussing the weather as part of small talk and we are regularly saying to people things like 'the weather is promised nice this week.

When the weather turns out to be nice we accept it, but if the weather is 'promised nice' but it turns out to be a disappointment, then we'll have conversations where we blame the weatherman for predicting something that didn't come true.

We remember the instances where the weather forecast was wrong, but we don't remember all of the times when it was accurate.
people still talk about one storm in 1987 where the weather forecast made a mistake. The intensity of the storm was underestimated and it didn't follow the predicted path.

However, people don't mention the hundreds of storms and thousands of other weather events that are predicted correctly with enough time for people to take action to limit the damage caused by the weather.

Using anecdotal evidence to decide how accurate or otherwise the weather predictions are is not scientific.
Before anyone claims that MET Eireann are unreliable, they should show data comparing the predictions and the actual weather.

Akrasia

Red Nissan wrote: »

I will stop you right there. met Eireann do provide a paid for professional service. This is not what is broadcast on the RTE News/Weather bulletins.

The general public don't need that level of detail on the 9 o clock news

Red Nissan

Akrasia wrote: »

The general public don't need that level of detail on the 9 o clock news

Sure, absolutely, but the discussion is about the RTE 'show' and the public certainly don't need it, correct.

Akrasia

Red Nissan wrote: »

Weather patterns are set and events change those patterns in time. A long range forecast can be made even years in advance. However, that forecast cannot be detailed.

A set of influences indicate severe weather, what actually arrives may be cold and the odd severe day rather than an entire severe winter. In general if severe weather is determined the arriving weather will be poor, it will rarely if ever be [the opposite] 'good' weather but not as severe as forecast.

You're confusing weather and climate
You can not possibly predict any single weather event years in advance.

You can say that the climate in 10 years will lead to conditions that are favourable for more storms or heavier rainfall, and that is the kind of thing climatologists say, but climatologists do not claim to be able to predict any individual weather events. A cold winter in Ireland is caused by a weather event. It's usually a blocking high pressure system that gets trapped over northern Europe and diverts the jet stream which pulls in cold air from the arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_(meteorology)
These conditions can not be predicted in advance because the weather is chaotic changes to the weather on other continents can be enough to break the deadlock over Europe and restore our normal wet and windy irish winter

pauldry

it is far better to persist in delusion than have the same weather every day.

blizzards and snowfests ahead.

drizzle bedamned

Onthe3rdDay

Akrasia wrote: »

A lot of this post is just confirmation bias
It is popular to 'blame the weatherman'
There's a culture in ireland of discussing the weather as part of small talk and we are regularly saying to people things like 'the weather is promised nice this week.

When the weather turns out to be nice we accept it, but if the weather is 'promised nice' but it turns out to be a disappointment, then we'll have conversations where we blame the weatherman for predicting something that didn't come true.

We remember the instances where the weather forecast was wrong, but we don't remember all of the times when it was accurate.
people still talk about one storm in 1987 where the weather forecast made a mistake. The intensity of the storm was underestimated and it didn't follow the predicted path.

However, people don't mention the hundreds of storms and thousands of other weather events that are predicted correctly with enough time for people to take action to limit the damage caused by the weather.

Using anecdotal evidence to decide how accurate or otherwise the weather predictions are is not scientific.
Before anyone claims that MET Eireann are unreliable, they should show data comparing the predictions and the actual weather.

Part of your response is correct. there is confirmation bias in my post. We're only human and that's what humans do. It's something to be aware of so you don't go making mistakes. You look at the facts and figures. Now I could go and do a survey taking into account a year's predictions but I don't have the time for that as in I have a job in the real world. However, I can say with certainty that over the last 12 months Met Eireann's forecast has been very different to others and almost all of the time they were the wrong one's. Some will say they didn't want to hype the figures or that they were being conservative and I understand that. However you've a lot of people out there, including those that depend on the weather forecast for work that don't trust Met Eireann any more. The past ten years have done a lot of damage to the organization because people can get forecasts elsewhere very easily.

As you say "Using anecdotal evidence to decide how accurate or otherwise the weather predictions are is not scientific." I'd 100 percent agree. What I'm saying is that many people I know Go to other organisations that use scientific methods and are much happier.

Then on top of that certain people in ME push their own agenda (which may be correct) poorly. They come across as being aggressive and defensive. Many of them need proper media training.

Akrasia

Met Eireann use HIRLAM for their weather predictions and this is as good a model as any available
Perhaps some private weather services use combinations of the different weather models which could give a more accurate result, but MET eireann use the same weather model as the the Norweigans, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish amongst others

The quality of our national weather forecasting is up there with the best of them

compsys

I think the quality of Met E's forecasts are quite good. As another poster said, we conveniently forget all the times they get the forecast right. I'd love to change a few presentation things about their forecasts but we need to be mindful of the smaller budget they work with.

To be honest, if you're looking for inaccurate forecasts then you don't need to look much further than here!

I'm not necessarily criticising the people in here as this is an amateur forum and we all like to get hyped up about events, but there's been some shockingly bad forecasting on here as well by people who have gotten completely carried away with things.

Last winter most of the moaning in here came from people who felt Met E weren't hyping up 'upcoming' snowfalls event. But I'd say over 90% of the time Met E were right as there was very little LYING DISRUPTIVE snow throughout last winter.

pistolpetes11

Akrasia wrote: »

Met Eireann use HIRLAM for their weather predictions and this is as good a model as any available
Perhaps some private weather services use combinations of the different weather models which could give a more accurate result, but MET eireann use the same weather model as the the Norweigans, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish amongst others

The quality of our national weather forecasting is up there with the best of them

Met Eireann use ECMWF, UKMO, GME, Hirlam, Harmonie

pauldry

i admire met Eireanns forecasts

but they should embrace all types of weather forecasting as there is much to learn even in the day to day forecasts as much as there is in the long range ones.

The day to day ones are mostly accurate but they too can have localized inaccuracies a lot too. There are times where rain is promised and it never comes and vica versa (mostly vica versa)

Long Range Forecasting is more based on climate patterns and though it is correct to say that the Winter will be an average one (around 80% of the time) there is still scope for variances and sometimes long range forecasters can warn some people of these variables before met eireann will even entertain them.

Most forecasts of this range are only 30 to 40% right but often times the models will have an agreed consensus of either continuous Atlantic weather and it can be forecasted with a good deal of accuracy that " a lot of wet and unsettled weather in the next month" or it may be that a big area of High Pressure is close by (as now) and it can be forecast that the next 3 weeks will see a lot of dry weather with some frosty nights.

Both methods need to be given their equal due and respect and with more than all due respect to Evelyn I think it is wrong of her to diss the long range method of forecasting .

Gremlin

Just my 2c worth. I had this very discussion with a lady in work the other day. Often people just don't even listen to the forecast. That lady in work mentioned that met eireann had predicted rain. It didn't rain. So I went back and looked at the forecast she was referring to. What they actually said was "Rain becoming heavy and persistent in the west". Of course my colleague just heard "rain".

I would bet good money that if you did a scientific study of met eireann 3 day forecast against actual observed condition, you would find a very high degree of correlation.

I have huge respect for Evelyn Cusack. I love the way she tries to explain why the weather is the way it is forecast. 'Polar front' etc. You always get a little bit of science. I think when Evelyn dissed the long term forecasts what she was referring to was the ones which were being too specific. You know we've read them, "Snow in the last two weeks of Feb etc". No disrespect to anyone, but there are way too many amateurs out there predicting all sorts of doom and gloom. I'd trust someone like Evelyn who has spent her life studying meteorology than some kid with a sub to netweather!

Red Nissan

Gremlin wrote: »

I'd trust someone like Evelyn who has spent her life studying meteorology than some kid with a sub to netweather!

I think I would too, that is if I knew they were just children.

pauldry

I trust met eireann weather forecasts way more than any other but I also listen to mt, look at the gfs etc to get an idea of what sort of weather patterns to expect, read the scrappy tabloids to see if there is any pattern in their sensationalist headlines, lookat weather websites, sea temps, arctic sea ice extent, climate averages and extremes and finally see what the birds are up to and berries on the trees.

I dare not give any forecast based on this only for 3 to 5 days,

I bet met eireann hate the bookies too trying to predict stuff weeks in advance, how dare they set odds on a white Christmas it's too inexact a science, perhaps a wet Friday odds or something more realistic

off to fi page now to dream of blue charts

marvsins

Interesting weather forecast tonight. Well worth a look on RTE player if you missed it.

finnharpsboy

evelyn telling stories bout birds and berries again

marvsins

Thought it was a bit strange the way she was so positive about animals and birds not being able to sense the weather.

finnharpsboy

marvsins wrote: »

Thought it was a bit strange the way she was so positive about animals and birds not being able to sense the weather.

She's started digging her hole, and iinstead of saying no more about it, she keeps digging deeper

jd

I wonder will she do chemtrails some day! She could forecast "present model outputs indicate that a group of freeman types may gather in the Bull Ring of Wexford Town on Saturday, handing out fliers and pointing at the sky."

GTE

Well lets give animals a chance!

I let my dog out to the garden one morning and she came in straight away and we discussed how it was cold and rainy outside over a cup of coffee and bowel of water. Sure enough, she was right!