There is a journalist at the Bristol Post whose name appears to be Bristol Post. His job is to find a story and then embellish it until it no longer bears any resemblance to the original one. This is how he (or she, but I’ll stick with ‘he’ for the purposes of this blog to save on characters) did it today with a classic scare story about impending bad weather.
Mr Post leads with the headline ‘Bristol could see a ‘White Easter’ as polar plunge is set to bring snow and ice to UK in March’, referring to the Met Office who apparently suggest there will be ‘sub zero temperatures at night throughout March’. And the Met Office are then quoted by referring to a ‘sudden stratospheric warming event in early March’, whatever that is: no one bothers to explain it to the perplexed reader – which will increase the likelihood of it being exceptionally cold. I had already emptied the contents of a bag of grit on my drive when I read further into the report to find that the Post had suddenly inserted another source into their story, a website called ‘Weather Outlook’, whose forecaster Brian Gaze said: ‘With the cold pattern persisting and a cold start to spring, the chances of snow at Easter are quite high.’ Well, how high? 50%? 75%? 100%? Or does he not have a clue?
It is hard to predict weather patterns any more than a week, maybe two weeks, ahead, never mind a month ahead. Sometimes, I foolishly believe a weather forecast that says it is going to be dry the next day and then I get caught in continuous rain. It is undoubtedly a science, but one that is still evolving. Mr Post, I would suggest, is guessing and, worse still, scaremongering.
The story goes on to say: ‘Transport bosses are being warned of the disruption this could cause to those hoping to travel on Britain’s roads this Easter.’ I am sure the gritters in South Gloucestershire and the rest of the country, not to mention the railways and airports, are deeply grateful for the revelation that bad weather could cause disruption. ‘Do you know what?’ said Bristol Airport’s managing director Andrew Skipp. ‘I never had a clue that eight feet of snow might affect the airport so I am extremely grateful to Mr Gaze. I will tell the maintenance lads to pop over to B&Q to buy a few new shovels and some salt.’
The Post is no longer owned by the Daily Mail group, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. It is, of course, possible that we will indeed get get snow this Easter and the weather guesses – for that is what they are – will be proved to be correct. But if you take the trouble to read the Met Office site forecast in full, you will note the following: ‘As usual the snow risk will be highest in northern areas’, something Mr Post somehow omitted from the story. So far as I can tell, Bristol does not come under the description ‘northern areas’, not even the frozen wastes of Yate and Chipping Sodbury, and it is more than likely that our weather will be, as usual, ‘changeable’, meaning that it will be cold and wet most of the time.
I just hope this scare story doesn’t confuse Santa Claus and his reindeers who might start their festive tour a full nine months early.
