Met Office Gives Up On Weather

After years duping the public with dodgy forecasts, the Met Office is giving up on the wrong kind of weather, scrapping long-term forecasts which left short-term misery.

Salad days of a scorching 'barbecue' summer turning into downpours and a 'mild' winter turning out to be the coldest and snowiest in decades are over.

The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts after coming in for some stick for failing to predict, er, the weather. Now it's going to be cold in winter, warm in summer and a bit iffy in between.

Quarterly 'long-range' forecasts, will be replaced by monthly predictions after years of gazing into crystal balls and missing cold winters, wet summers and the odd fishy hurricane.

According to the Met Office: "By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look." Well slap me on the bum with a wet Weather Weekly.

After a string of embarrassing gaffes, the Met Office now admits: "Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather."

Which begs the question - why have they been at it for so long?

Duping the public to stay at home with a scorcher dangled in front of them to prop up the dire economy?

A mild winter ahead to fuel the "good news" PR spin and push the politics of false hope?

Discredited global warming zealots pushing the man-made climate change con which has given science such a bad name?

A panicked state-owned multi-million pounds weather industry set to be sold off in a fire sale?

The Met Office, with an annual budget of around £82.3 million, is keen to blow its own trumpet over the "contribution to the UK economy" with the familiar dollop of Brown sauce.

The public "values the Met Office’s services at £353.2 million," according to VFM spinners. Shurley shome mishtake?

The Exeter-based Met Office, added that it would "work towards developing the 'science' of long-range forecasting." More dodgy computer models with a £30 million big boys' computer toy. It's that kind of pseudo-science babble which demonised science in the first place.

It's a sure sign of storm clouds ahead when the government-owned Met Office is forced to change its tune and admit the game is up. For the Met Office the outlook is "changeable".