h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It starts every year in October and the headlines and news stories are so over the top and hilarious. Stating that there will be blizzards lasting several months and that the country from Lands End to John O'Groats will be blanked in very deep snow or that there will be hurricanes and floods all over the country and then changing their mind again saying that we will be having a heat wave.

I never take them seriously as they are so funny and they would make a great plot line for a comedy sketch. All I can say that the reporters or the people that they get the dire weather predications from should become comedians as they are unintentionally very funny. I wonder if the UK is the only country to have bizarre and exaggerated weather stories reported in their newspapers.

It depends on whom you listen to, Thinker. The tabloids here are of course very happy to report long-term predictions. Both the very scary and the overly optimistic.

But more serious media also dutifully add, that meteorologists never dare to predict the weather much longer than five days at a time.

"stating that there will be blizzards lasting several months and that the country from Lands End to John O'Groats will be blank[et]ed in very deep snow or that there will be hurricanes and floods all over the country and then changing their mind[s] again saying that we will be having a heat wave." [Thinker]

Ah, but don't you see that contradictory forecasts are part of their escape strategy. The extreme heat and cold did actually happen, but they cancelled each other out, producing the normal weather that you actually saw.

Last the Broadsheets and local newspapers were copying what was being reported in the tabloids with their winter exaggerated claims of snow and plummeting temperatures.

Here is a weather news story from the Evening Yorkshire Post.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/trending/weather-warning-yorkshire-set-for-months-of-snow-1-7511317

No actually link to their Newspaper Story but the Sunday Post had a news story on the 4th October 2015 predicating a winter Armageddon.

Here is a clip of the story which was reported in the Net Weather TV forum.

It seems bees are narrowing the entries to their hives to keep in the heat, and the last time they did that was before the harsh winter of 2010.

So, to bees on the safe side, look out your snow shovels - a winter Armageddon is on its way.

Time to take out this old beauty from the moth balls:

It was October, and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild?

Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.

Two weeks later the Chief called the National Weather Service again.

"Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever."

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy."

It's very hard to do accurate long term weather forecasting for the UK as being an island and it can change from mild weather to very cold weather in a matter of a few days and then return again to more milder temperatures.

Here are some BBC weather reports and a weather news story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSy5rd5b6yA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJn4Cs7Vsj0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj-gqxMGcfE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqjNdnKOXR0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIotWIjYwPs


This last video shows what happens when local authorities are caught out as predicating where it snows and how much snow will fall is extremely difficult to do. Many parts of the UK rarely get any significant snow falling in their area which is the reason why the UK is so badly prepared as we do not get snow very year. The only place that gets the most snow is in the Scottish Cairngorms in Aberdeenshire and the surrounding areas.

One day the tabloids actually might get their weather predications right.

Thanks Pierce for sharing that very funny story.