Obsessive disorder that’s now completely incurable

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Like most amateurs (and maybe the professionals too) who dabble into ‘all things weather’, there are two main accusations regularly levelled in our direction. The first of those centres on the word ‘obsession’, while the second one usually starts with the line: ‘you haven’t got a clue’.

Billions of euro are spent across the globe every year by meteorological giants as they try to keep pace with technology in terms of the latest super-computer aimed at providing greater overall accuracy, better long term forecasts and more localised detail.

The position of Ireland and the UK on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean; their mid-latitude location that puts them in a real middle ground in terms of polar air masses and warmer stuff to the south; as well as changeable wind patterns, makes forecasting notoriously hazardous in our neck of the woods.

A bit like politics, all weather is local. If it’s raining in Tuam and the sun is shining in Athenry, then one of the forecasts for Galway will be wrong, but overall weather predictions have improved considerably over recent decades.

Last week, an email arrived at my computer from the AccuWeather corporation in America, extolling the virtues of their new forecasting model, predicting conditions for 90 days in advance . . . yes a forecast for each day, for your location up until the end of July.

The accompanying graphic for the month of May is again one that’s worth pinning up beside the calendar to run the accuracy check on, but given the difficulty that the likes of the UK Met Office and Met Éireann have in going five days in advance, it does seem to be stretching things a bit to predict, for example, that June 2 next will be a sunny day with just the odd shower.

AccuWeather, though, are not into quackery. They are a meteorological giant with a head office in Pennsylvania, employing over a thousand people, largely funded by advertising and commercial weather contracts they have with organisations such as governments, big business, media outlets, and other institutions.

Satellite information, local stations, high-powered computers and an extensive team of eminently qualified scientists and meteorologists power the service that can be accessed free by ‘ordinary’ computer users.

For more, read this weeek’s Connacht Tribune.