Knowing the forecast tommorow is predicting black ice (because of rain falling onto frozen roads I understand), and also knowing I have an important meeting 130 miles away I started wondering......
Is there a website that gives you an accurate forecast of the weather you are likly to be driving though on a complete journey.
I can go to the BBC weather website and put in a town or postcode but I will be doing a jaunt on the M3, M25 and M23 so this is not so relevant.
Also just before Christmas I have a drive from East Sussex all the way to the Highlands of Scotland (again, weather permitting).
Have I just got to look at a weather forecast showing the country as a whole or is there something more accurate?
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I once drove from London to Bristol. April. It was sunny when I left. At swindon the snow was so heavy the wipers jammed up. In bristol it was sunny.
How the hell can you forecast that!
--
RF - Da DAA. < changes in phone box > Its TOURVAN man
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If the snow was around Membury services I'm not suprised, it seems to have a microclimate all of its own.
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Weather is so localised that it would be impossible to obtain such a forecast.
Where I live, one sunny summer day, seven miles away there was considerable flooding over what was really a comparatively small area after a torrential downpour...:-)
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Knowing I was crossing the Pennines early this morning I checked the AA and RAC sites for exactly this info and there wasn't anything. Odd really when both organisations are so prominent in telling motorists to prepare properly.
I got the train instead.
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SFR,
Try the Met office site - you can click on different regions then select towns along your route.
www.met-office.gov.uk/
"Weather is so localised that it would be impossible to obtain such a forecast."
stuart - if that is the case why do they do the above? Surely they could just give a generalised forecast for a large region or the whole country? And with the radar they use surely they should be able to predict to within a few miles where it (rain or snow) will fall? And if it ain't possible why did they spend all that money (I think we established in an earlier thread that it was £25m) on a new computer for predictions.
It seems to me to be pretty unacceptable that thousands of people were stranded last week in their cars(and I gather a lot last night also in Gloucs) because forecasts are so poor! If forecasts are poor, we can hardly blame the gritters for not going out! Sometimes you almost wish they would just look out of the window. As I said earlier, last night's Central Weather said "a few snow flurries" occurred during the afternoon when there were 2 or 3 inches lying on the ground.
Rant over!!
Phil
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>>t seems to me to be pretty unacceptable that thousands of people were stranded last week in their cars(and I gather a lot last night also in Gloucs) because forecasts are so poor! >>
Seem to have answered your own queries a sentence or two before..:-))
I live on the North West coastline. Any motorists - in particular delivery/commercial vehicle drivers - who travel around the region inland will be well aware of certain areas where the weather is often sharply different from surrounding districts.
A lot of it is due to geographical features, but you would never come across such information in weather forecasts as the areas involved are comparatively small.
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"Any motorists - in particular delivery/commercial vehicle drivers - who travel around the region inland will be well aware of certain areas where the weather is often sharply different from surrounding districts.A lot of it is due to geographical features, but you would never come across such information in weather forecasts as the areas involved are comparatively small."
OK, so if these "any motorists", drivers are well aware of the differences and the geographical features which cause them how come the met office and their fantastic/detailed forecasting models are not?? Sounds like they need a few locals making an input!! They do, after all try to give forecasts for, say, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Loughborough etc or ask you to put in a postcode- why not just say central areas of the British Isles? And surely they should have been able to forecast at least that there could be severe disruption to travel and several inches of snow throughout the south west - not exactly a small local variation that roads were covered in snow anywhere between Plymouth and Penzance??
Phil
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>>how come the met office and their fantastic/detailed forecasting models are not?? >>
Quite simply because the areas involved are, as I've stated, comparatively small...:-)
It's hardly worth the Met Office detailing such highly localised information, especially as the conditions can change quite sharply in a very short period of time.
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"It's hardly worth the Met Office detailing such highly localised information"
and that also applies to the whole of Devon and Cornwall and much of South Wales apparently??? :-)
Oh well, let's agree that the recent weather forecasts have been pretty useless in certain areas shall we?? :-)
Phil
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How the hell can you forecast that!
To use you example RF I have on occasions looked at the BBC website and put in London, Reading, Swindon, Bristol to see what I might have to contend with. In fact I used to do west London to Somerset regularly, headed down the M4 one night in snow flurries, the road was gritted so was fine, got to Newbury and it was as though the gritters had turned off, I literally went up a step on to compacted snow and it was like that all the way to Bath, little visibility, not much traffic though Membury was full of people trying to defrost their washers, 30 mph all the way.
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>>"We had six inches of snow in the Midlands where I live. Other parts of Staffordshire close to us had very little snow even though they are within 3 miles or so of me.">>
The above sentence from a posting by Halmer is taken from this thread first seen late last night:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?f=2&t=36...5
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Apart from the comments about local peculiarities of the weather, the fact is that the whole lot is moving around the country at 10 to 20 mph and forecasting is a nightmare. It has been my experience that the forecasters can tell you what is coming but they have difficulty in timing it. Plus the forecasts can change but the changes may not be published; I went to Malaga a couple of weeks ago and got two 5 day forecasts from the BBC, one hour apart, and they were unrecognisable as referring to the same place - they were so different!
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I guess what I want is certainty and life is not like that.
Would be nice to type in 'Devizes - Haywards Heath, Wednesday 30th' and see ' Sunshine all the way' or 'NOOOO!!! Stay in bed or get stuck on the M3 for 5 hours in a snow drift'
Ah well. If there was nothing to moan about, what on earth would I moan about?
:0)
What made me laugh at myself after being snowed in at Gatwick a year or so ago is that I went out and bought a shovel to stick in the boot of the car precisely for a trip like I have tommorow. Then you sit and rationally think it through.
Will I really shovel a path for mile upon mile, me and one shovel? Think it might stay in the garage tomorrow!
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I don't think you're expected to act as a one man snow plough, the shovel is there to help you out if your wheels start spinning and you can't move or to dig you out of a drift if you skind into one.
A better suggestion would be to put a couple of very strong plastic sacks in to place under your spinning wheels. Tie strong string through a corner so you can tie the bags to handle/bumper etc and drive off onto safe ground to retrieve them.
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