MET OFFICE'S BAD NEWS FOR FARMERS & TOURIST INDUSTRY
August 6, 2009 9:35 AM
In North Devon Journal
In North Devon Journal
It turns out the Met Office's optimism was ill-founded and we will now not be getting a 'barbecue summer' as predicted after all. Although a multi-million pound operation based in Exeter the Met is telling us that long-term forecasting (i.e. over 6 days) is a new science! Despite all the technology at its command long-term forecasting still clearly remains a very inexact science. I am informed that short term modeling is on the whole very good. In stark contrast long-term is affected by so many interrelated variables that at this stage it all remains very experimental. What is worrying is that these 'experimental' predictions are potentially very damaging to our economy.
It has been speculated that the Met Office's rosy forecast was due to pressure from tourism chiefs. Indeed its press office has been blamed for giving the summer forecast an excessively positive spin in order to be helpful. In reality there is no escaping the fact that most British summers are unsettled, wet and not very warm, yet we like to forget an inconvenient truth - we live in a temperate northern climate. It seems our national obsession with long hot summers has reached embarrassing levels.
It now looks like our farmers are facing their third wet harvest in a row, which is no good. The weather has already delayed this year's harvest and the NFU is reporting that little has been cut and what has needs to go into grain driers. It's not all bad news. South West tourism is anticipating a summer comparable to last year, with expected revenues of £1billion for Devon and Cornwall clearly a figure not to be scoffed at, but the thought of another unrelentingly wet summer is still pretty grim. It increasingly looks like indoor attractions are the way ahead for North Devon, but let's not write our glorious beaches off just yet!
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