Forecasting During The Cold Snap

I love the extremes of weather and that is what drives me to do my weather forecasting – that and the belief that people should have access to the same level of information that I do, not just what the major agencies dare tell them.

I do have a slight advantage – if I get it wrong, I am not going to lose a major weather forecasting contract, I may have a couple less likes on Facebook or someone might tell me I’m shit – but I won’t lose thousands of pounds or a job, etc.  Therefore I can say two or more weeks in advance what I believe is going to happen in the weather, quite safely.  I have nothing to lose.

The recent cold spell, whilst I am very happy with my predictions, especially predicting it well in advance, was tremendously difficult to forecast.  It is very frustrating when I have to say “70% chance of snow, 20% chance of sleet/rain, 10% chance of dry” just 24 hours before an event rather than being able to be 100% but the cold spell has given so many marginal calls to make, and mostly I feel I have given a good interpretation of what can be expected.

I also have an advantage that I am predicting for a very small area of land that I have lived in nearly 15 years as opposed to a whole country.

I do put a lot of effort in, and as much as I have enjoyed this cold spell, I am delighted that the forecasting will now become much easier – no need to spend 1-2 hours a day studying various models to be point of totally confusing myself, rain is rain and it now becomes a quick and simple task.

Being an amateur, all I require is a few ‘likes’ now and again, a bit of love for my efforts!  During the cold spell, I have gone from around 30 likes to 73 likes, and from reaching 34 people a week to 764 people a week (not exactly sure how Facebook calculates this).

Who knows, maybe one day in the distant future, my childhood dream of working in a weather-related job may come true.

Though I am actually realising my childhood dream in my own very small way.

Thank you for reading (and special thanks if you shared my forecasts). x