In late February the BoM forecast March and April rain as follows.
Now rain to date for March (1st to 26th) shows Australia was wet in the west and dry to average in the east- sort of exact opposite of the above March rain Outlook.
Now note the February Outlook for April in top panel forecasting a dry April.
Contrast that with the new April rain Outlook just issued forecasting a widespread wet.
Who could believe a word the BoM utters when they keep changing predictions.
BoM are having problems with daily forecasts too. Some maximum forecasts here in Broome have been out by up to 5C, and the same with minimums, especially when storms are about. I have given up believing anything they put out.
It hasn’t helped that on the BoM side of the airport, little or no rain was recorded on 3 or 4 days this month, and 20-30mm recorded privately on the south side of the airport.
I rely a lot on my own instincts on local weather, my nursery and landscaping activities need more certainty than what BoM offer.
I am in the market for a private weather station if anyone has any ideas, the nursery and orchard activities are 25km out of town.
Tom, I would contact Anthony Watts’ weather stations and custom weather monitoring solutions store: www.weathershop.com/
I’ve never had a problem with weather forecasters forecasting and getting it wrong. After all, they (and economists) are the only professions which can consistently get it wrong and still keep their jobs.
That’s because we all know that trying to predict the future is a hopeless task.
No, what earned them my ire and eternal disgust was when they – despite all of their experience and personal knowledge of how impossible future prediction is – jumped onto the climate change bandwagon and started to pretend that their models could predict tens or hundreds of years into the future. They, of all people, should have known better.
Greetings WH.
You might be interested in this:
Dr Rob Vertessy, Director, Bureau of Meteorology on Sunday Profile
with Richard Aedy on 702 ABC Sydney
Sunday 29th March
Of particular interest might be this question @11.50-
“I want to ask you about a series of attacks on the Bureau in the Australian newspaper. I think there were 14 or so in a few months when the Bureau was accused of fiddling with it’s temperature data …” (It’s not slanderous/salacious or anything)
The full interview is 24.29 mins.
www.abc.net.au/radio/programitem/peyl3MNdrQ?play=true
Seen a news report about redundancies at BoM on FB. I know it’s April 1, but I can’t find it now.
Anyway, this is going to hurt, a movie short: pindanpost.com/2015/04/01/the-war-without-end-co2/ that everyone must see.
Google found this Tom –
Summer of discontent at BOM – February 13, 2015
www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/summer-of-discontent-at-bom-20150212-133m6r.html
and handjive next week I hope to post an MP3 file of part of the Directors radio talk.
Warwick, they sure got the projection for April rainfall wrong. SE Queensland has already had in the first 4 days the average rain for the whole month.
Not sure how they calculated their chart for March. The rainfall was below average but not to the extent shown. Maybe their electronic gauges have a problem particularly with heavy rainfall as occurred around 21&22 March. I had an electronic gauge (tipping bucket type) I found 1/ wrong calibration -the actual bucket size was some 1/3 larger 2/ buckets overflowed with heavy rain before tips were recorded – upto 25% low error during days of heavy rain over nine months comparison period. 3/ non-recording of low precipitation (eg heavy dew of 0.2mm followed by a warm day). 4/ non-recording from occasional signal interference 5/ low recording as the battery life reduced.
I gave up on the electronic gauge -over $100 of wasted money and waste of time.
Every single day BOM fails in giving us a proper forecast, around the office everyday we discuss just how inaccurate BOM weather forecasts are. Just last week they predicted that Melbourne city and inner will be flooded! That same day it didn’t even rain! And the next day it barely showered. This is not a one off error this happens every week.
What a complete and utter failure. No one believes the forecast anymore, everyone I know just goes by their instincts now just like our ancients did “hmmm it does look like rain”