Glasgow Weather Just Can’t Make Up It’s Mind.

Yes, it’s another weather related post. Hey, we live in sunny ole Scotland! One must, according to law, always speak about the weather in Scotland. The purpose of this post is simple. I need to rant a bit.

I’m used to bad weather, or “severe weather events”, as the news corporations like to call them nowadays. I’ve seen typhoons, blizzards, tropical storms, monsoon seasons, earthquakes, forest fires, huge thunder storms, floods, blistering tropical heat in excess of 48°C and f-r-r-e-e-zing chills in the region of -35°C. Fun stuff. Beats some of the crap that’s on TV and the movie theaters today.

But, I like to prepare for it. I like to get a little bit of an advance warning. (Before you mention earthquakes, I lived in Greece and I was 14 years old at the time so I was anxiously waiting an eathquake.) Which is why I like to follow weather predictions. I know it’s not exactly an exact science, especially here in Scotland, but sometimes I’d like to think the meteorologists would have a clue to shake a stick at. Case in point is yesterday’s (Thursday Dec 4th) weather prediction as it transpired between Monday and Thursday. Let’s start with the prediction on Monday as the day was changing into Tuesday.

Well, that’s a little all over the board, isn’t it? Oh, it must be some lackluster meteorological surveyor somewhere in the Highlands. I imagine a man with his sheepdog, a pipe in his mouth, a finger extended into the wind. Possibly inebriated due to the tub of whisky he had for breakfast.

Nope. It’s from the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC. Well, this should be pretty accurate, right? Excuse me, I’m going to go around the corner to laugh uncontrollably. 

Look at the first predictions.
Tuesday, Light Showers.
Wednesday, Sunny.
Thursday, Heavy Snow.

Look closely at Thursday. Heavy Snow. I was quite excited. They even issued severe weather alerts for most of Scotland and Monday saw snow and ice here and there in Scotland. Heavy snow on Thursday, yippee! 

And here’s the prediction on Thursday. Sleet.

Nuts.

I was looking forward to waking up on Thursday morning to a white wintery scene greeting me as I pull back the curtains. Oh, notice that Tuesday’s Light Showers became sunny and Wednesday’s Sunny became Foggy. Let’s see what Thursday morning brings us…

Um, wrong! Again! There were no Heavy Showers on Thursday morning. The above screenshot was taken in the early morning, whilst the one below came from later on in the afternoon…

And wrong again. There was no rain. No snow. No sun. The whole thing was a huge letdown. Oh well, at least we can always be certain that there’ll be rain on Friday, and apparently quite a bit of it. Hey, if there’s one weather event which here in Scotland can be easily calculated, one would think it’d be rain, right?

THERE WAS NO RAIN ON FRIDAY!!!

That’s a clean sweep over 5 days of absolute fail from the meteorologists. And that there is the reason I’m rehabilitating myself from my addiction to daily weather reports. I’ll just assume that the weather on any given day will be Unpredictable.

As a final note, there is one weather site which is typically pretty accurate. It’s called is it going to rain? It’s the most simple weather site online as all it really does is that it tells you whether or not it’s going to rain where you are. (If the location below the answer is not accurate, just click on it and it will give you the option of manually setting your location.)

Living in a country where rain is a distinct possiblity on most days, this is the one I’ll trust from now on. Then again, practically every single day the site gives me the same answer:

Well, it’s a lot bloody more accurate than the BBC predictions!

-Jani