Britain 'In For Another Big Freeze Winter'

source: climaterealists / telegraph
by: Stephen Adams

Climate Realists: The UK media still ignore Piers Corbyn's long range weather forecasts at WeatherAction.com and instead use the "crystal ball" service from Jonathan Powell of Positive Weather Solutions, why!

WeatherAction is the ONLY service that can produce long range forecasts with any accuracy, and it achieves this using the effect of predictable solar activity. To use any other service that relies on any other method just DOES NOT WORK as our climate is controlled by the SUN. Well done to Jonathan Powell for having a go but unless you use the service from Piers Corbyn you're onto a loser in the long term.

Telegraph: Jonathan Powell of Positive Weather Solutions said the country should prepare itself for "back-to-back" harsh winters.

Last winter was the coldest for 31 years, with the average UK-wide temperature from 1 December to 24 February being only 34.7F (1.5C), compared to the long-term average of 38.6F (3.7C).

The mercury plunged as low as -8.1F (-22.3C) in Altnaharra, Scotland, while Benson, Oxon, recorded 10.8F (-11.8C).

The Met Office had predicted there was only a one-in-seven chance of a cold winter, which was caused by strong anti-cyclonic activity bringing persistent icy winds off the continent, and keeping milder Atlantic breezes at bay.

That statement came after an overly-optimistic forecast for summer 2009, which rather rashly predicted that Britain was "odds-on for a barbecue summer".

While it was slightly warmer than average it turned out to be another damp affair and the Met Office was roundly criticised.

The combination of the two predictions led it to drop public announcements of its seasonal forecasting service, which it has relegated to its research department.

However, Positive Weather Solutions, which claims to have correctly forecast the 2009 washout summer and last winter's plunging temperatures, has continued to offer long-range forecasts.

Mr Powell said: "It is very unusual to have two very harsh winters back-to-back, so most people would have expected a tamer and milder winter this year.

"But this winter will be similar to last winter, although not quite as harsh. We could well see temperatures as cold as last winter, albeit on a less-sustained level.

"We expect periods of disruptive snowfall similar to the snow we saw last winter, although periods of harsh weather will be broken up by milder conditions.

"A White Christmas is a distinct possibility for higher ground in the east, north-east and Scotland and also possibly higher ground in the west.

"And with a combination of snow, ice and bitterly-cold temperatures, we could well see another ‘white-out’ scenario as some areas of the country grind to a halt.

"School closures are very likely, as is disruption on the roads and the possibility people may be stranded in their cars if there are heavy snowfalls or if roads are not fully gritted.

"Local authorities need to be warned that they will have to handle another very cold winter."

According to its website, PWS bases its forecasts on "a central computer program which searches a partitioned slice of historical data, looking for patterns and trends within it".

They are not always right. In mid-July, PWS predicted: "August for all of the UK will be dry and warm." The month turned out to be dull, wet and the coolest since 1993.

Met Office has vastly greater computational power than small-scale outfits, access to more data and more highly-trained meteorologists.

But Michael Lawrence, a Met Office forecaster, explained that even with such resources, long-term prediction was a notoriously difficult business.

He said that while the Met Office always quantified the probability of long-term weather scenarios, others were not so rigorous.

"What these forecasters do is pit themselves in opposition to what we say and if they get it right they get a lot of publicity," he lamented.

If they got it wrong "nobody knows who they are" so it did not matter, he added.

The Met Office now limits its public predictions to 30 days.

It is predicting an "unsettled period" for October, with mild, wet and windy weather giving way mid-month to calmer conditions and near-normal temperatures - which will mean frosts for parts of the country - for the remainder.