Does weather fascinate you? It certainly grips me. Perhaps because I live in a smallish island (by American standards) buffeted by Atlantic currents from the West and Siberian drifts from the East. Westerly currents mean rain and warmer temperatures, while flow from the East and North is chilly. Simple, you'd think?
Well, weather forecasting is difficult, even for the best in the business. Weather patterns are stochastic, influenced by lots of different variables changing constantly, and it takes a helluva job to get it right most of the time.
So can you make money out of calling the weather right? In February 2018, BBC ditched their £3 million annual contract with the UK's venerable Met Office, which had stood for some 95 years. Instead they plumped for a private weather forecasting company called Meteo Group, founded by a Dutch meteorologist in the 1980s, now headquartered in London. There were howls of protest from traditionalists when BBC's familiar weather pages were replaced by strange charts and symbols from the pan-European group, but the BBC stood its ground.
The irony is that Meteo Group- the private company, takes its raw data from the Met Office....it then puts that data into its own models and comes up with a bespoke prediction.
Well, here's the interesting bit. This coming week, the two agencies- Met Office and Meteo Group- BBC's erstwhile and current weather Gurus- are about to go head to head. Meteo Group are predicting more snow leading up to Easter, on the premise that Siberian winds are going to linger over Britain, much to a runner's chagrin, while the Met Office are predicting cold weather, but no snow, based on their view that the Easterly stuff will work its way through but not tarry. As you can imagine, I am firmly rooting for the latter.
We shall find out soon. Who would have thought there would be so much riding on a bit of forecast?
Well, weather forecasting is difficult, even for the best in the business. Weather patterns are stochastic, influenced by lots of different variables changing constantly, and it takes a helluva job to get it right most of the time.
So can you make money out of calling the weather right? In February 2018, BBC ditched their £3 million annual contract with the UK's venerable Met Office, which had stood for some 95 years. Instead they plumped for a private weather forecasting company called Meteo Group, founded by a Dutch meteorologist in the 1980s, now headquartered in London. There were howls of protest from traditionalists when BBC's familiar weather pages were replaced by strange charts and symbols from the pan-European group, but the BBC stood its ground.
The irony is that Meteo Group- the private company, takes its raw data from the Met Office....it then puts that data into its own models and comes up with a bespoke prediction.
Well, here's the interesting bit. This coming week, the two agencies- Met Office and Meteo Group- BBC's erstwhile and current weather Gurus- are about to go head to head. Meteo Group are predicting more snow leading up to Easter, on the premise that Siberian winds are going to linger over Britain, much to a runner's chagrin, while the Met Office are predicting cold weather, but no snow, based on their view that the Easterly stuff will work its way through but not tarry. As you can imagine, I am firmly rooting for the latter.
We shall find out soon. Who would have thought there would be so much riding on a bit of forecast?
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