Forecasters Are Useless – Satellites Don’t Lie

Now, before you think I’m a proper anorak, it is important to understand the weather down here. It’s important for me to know if it’s likely to rain in the morning because that determines whether I use the car or the scooter to take the kids to the school bus. It also helps us make sure Guy and Kitty are dressed appropriately as they’d both go off to school in t-shirts if we did not watch them, and the probable weather, like hawks.

Planning ahead for the skiing is also imperative. If we know there’s a sunny day coming along we can rearrange anything we’ve got planned and be ready to head up to the slopes the morning the sun is shining.

Virtually everybody I phone in the UK asks about the weather within a minute of the call starting so if I say it’s raining, it’s nice to be able to say that the following day will be really sunny. They expect it to be sunny down here so by confirming their expectations, it makes them feel better.

And finally, and something really mundane, it’s nice to know when my soaking wet wood can be dried out for the fire. Burning wet logs which smoke like a kipper-house doesn’t really add to the ambience of the lounge!

So, given all these imperatives, looking at the weather forecast is quite important for us, hence why we have the local weather forecast as one of our top-ten bookmarks on the internet. We don’t have French TV so the internet is our only recourse.

Unfortunately, the Yahoo site which provides the local weather can change, seemingly at will. Look at it in the morning and it will say that we’ve got a high of 59 and sun for the following day. Great – a possibility of skiing or a nice lunch out. Then we check it in the evening and hey presto – it’s forecasting rain for the next day!

So recently, and given I’ve not been able to do much because of the endless rain, I’ve been looking for a new site and I’ve got one. It’s a satellite picture of various parts of the world showing the incoming weather days ahead, and over the last week or so I reckon I’ve become a bit of an expert. By zeroing in on the Med area, I can see low-pressure squalls coming in. I can differentiate between snow and showers. I can see stormy, windy weather approaching. The problem is that as we’ve not had any real sunshine since I found the site, I’ve not been able to see what that looks like on the weather map – probably nothing – just a clear patch. I think there’s one coming in March looking at the map !!!

So, I feel a new career coming on. A local weather forecaster providing detailed weather to all the ex-pats who need to dry their logs out. Watch this space.

By the way – here’s the site.

 http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/satpics/latest_IR.html