The Weather: Who Should We Believe?

Now that the thaw has arrived the recriminations are starting.  Following on from the Met Office's notorious "barbecue summer" quip came , what will surely become equally notorious, the forecast of a Winter of "above average temperatures" for a Winter that was actually the worst and coldest for 30 years.  These amazing predictions have led many to rightly question the viability of the Met Office's longer range forecasts.
But there are other problems as well.  The issue of Severe Weather Warnings has been well and truly overdone with many in our area (Dunblane) proving to be far too pessimistic.  This only serves to reduce people's confidence so that when the real warning comes it will be ignored.  And equally there has been an extraordinary disparity between Met Office and BBC forecasts, both in the nature of the weather expected and the temperatures.  In one case the Met Office and the BBC temperature forecast for Dunblane was different by 6 degrees!  Given that the BBC uses the raw data feed from the Met Office how can this be so?  And who are we supposed to believe?  And why does the BBC have "meteorologists"(rather than just televisual presenters) when the Met Office has them too?  And why do they give different forecasts?  We should be told.

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