St Swithun's weather.

Hosepipe bans and cricket always seem to be the modern equivalent of a rain dance. Mrs Rigby can't deny that the gardens of Rigby Towers were in desperate need of more than a drop of rain because, despite regular dosing with watering cans, some of the larger shrubs were beginning to suffer what might be permanent damage.

And now, of course, it's St Swithun's Day. Stories tell us that the Saint had been buried in the churchyard outside the Priory Church of Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Swithun as he had requested, until some more serious folk decided he'd be better inside the rather splendid shrine they'd built for him - so they dug up his bones and moved him indoors. The saint wasn't, apparently, too pleased and so made it start raining and he made it carry on raining for 40 days.

British 21st century man, who is unlikely to mark the calendar by saints days, doesn't like this sort of tradition, so we're now told how 15th July is merely a marker for stuck weather systems and patterns and, because of the way these things work, the weather on that day could continue for the next few weeks - or not.

Mrs R thinks it's rather nice to know that St Swithun's verse ...

St. Swithun's day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithun's day, if thou be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain na mair.

... is mirrored by weather traditions elsewhere in Europe. For example.

In France they say Quand il pleut a la Saint Gervais Il pleut quarante jours apres - If it rains on St. Gervais' day (19th of July), it will rain for fourty days thereafter.

In Germany the Siebenschlaefer or seven sleepers day (July 7th, after the Gregorian calendar) refers to the weather patterns of the following seven weeks.

....

Summer solstice.

21st June - the longest day of the year, the shortest night of the year.

Enjoy!

Only six months to the Winter Solstice!

....

Lord Monckton snacks on George Monbiot & John Abraham

At Last, the Climate Extremists Try to Debate Us!

Here's an extract

First, the IPCC also says, on the very page quoted by Abraham, that even if there were a major collapse of the ice the Greenland ice sheet would not entirely disintegrate for millennia, a phrase that was also used in the IPCC’s 2001 report, where it was made plain that surface temperatures at least 2 Celsius degrees higher than today’s would have to persist for several millennia before either the Greenland or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could melt away.

True, the British Antarctic Survey disagrees with the IPCC and maintains that the WAIS is in imminent danger of collapse, but so far even the IPCC has not bought that alarmist story.

Secondly — as I said in my talk, but as Abraham very carefully failed to point out in his — both sides of this particular argument have been carefully heard in the impartial forum of the British High Court. The British government, unsuccessfully attempting to defend Gore on this point, had eventually been compelled — when confronted with what the IPCC actually says about several millennia — to concede that Gore’s 20 feet of sea level rise was a flagrant exaggeration.

And the judge’s finding could not have been blunter:

The Armageddon scenario that he [Gore] depicts is not based on any scientific view.

Read the rest of the article, it's worth it.

....

A change of climate at the Royal Society.

Bishop Hill points out in several recent posts that the Royal Society is to fully rewrite its statement about climate change.

This seems to have happened because 43 Fellows of the Royal Society

... complained that it had oversimplified its messages.

They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.

and

One Fellow who said he was not absolutely convinced of the dangers of CO2 told me: "This [RS pamphlet 'Climate Change Controversies'] appears to suggest that anyone who questions climate science is malicious. But in science everything is there to be questioned - that should be the very essence of the Royal Society. Some of us were very upset about that.

"I can understand why this has happened - there is so much politically and economically riding on climate science that the society would find it very hard to say 'well, we are still fairly sure that greenhouse gases are changing the climate' but the politicians simply wouldn't accept that level of honest doubt."

The result is a carefully worded statement from the Royal Society "New guide to science of climate change", with this as the closing paragraph:

There is a wide variety of views across the Fellowship on any active area of science, not just climate science, and this diversity is an essential component of the testing that scientific knowledge must always undergo. Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect – there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements, etc. However, the existence of some uncertainty does not mean that scientific results have no significance or consequences, or should not be acted upon. The enormous beneficial impact of science over the last 350 years is testament to the success of this balancing of uncertainty with action in the application of science.

The Times suggests that Rebel scientists force Royal Society to accept climate change scepticism and the Telegraph says Royal Society to publish guide on climate change to counter claims of 'exaggeration'.

In the light of the Royal Society's decision to acknowledge that different scientists (of equal calibre) can and do interpret results differently, and are capable of having informed differences of opinion and debate, can anybody truly say, "The science is settled", and call those of a different opinion 'deniers' and 'flat-earthers'?

It will be interesting to see what happens next, and how world governments will react.

....

At the seaside.

A day at the seaside sounds good, and it is good for some children because it can be somewhere to relax and have a bit of old-fashioned fun. Building sandcastles with turrets and moats, and trying to beat the incoming tide. Working out how to skim stones, and being best at it. Figuring out a way to pull that huge crab out of the water and get it into a bucket.

Paddling along the water's edge should be fun too - hopping over the waves, standing still and seeing how long it takes for your toes to be buried by sand. It should be safe too, because all parents know the perils of water and the erratic power of waves.

Not so one family who took their daughter to Porthcawl.

The floating body of Samayh Ali was spotted by a passer-by who dragged her from the water onto the beach.

The anonymous life saver the gave the toddler mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR until she spluttered and started breathing again.

Good job the little girl wasn't spotted by this chap.

'Just sitting' by the sea can be good too, there's something mesmerising about moving water, there's always something to see and, of course, we all know to protect ourselves from the hot sun and make sure our children's delicate skin is not damaged by those nasty rays.

But, all the preaching, all the posters, all the TV ads - just what's the point? They've been at it for donkey's years but it seems that at least one 29 year old mother has never noticed any health warnings.

At Brighton

‘An ambulance was called for the five-month-old baby who was visiting Brighton from London with his 29-year-old mother.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) intervened after they saw the boy on Brighton seafront on Sunday afternoon as temperatures reached 25c.

‘Paramedics who attended the scene believed the boy was suffering from 20 per cent burns to his body.

So, maybe some PCSOs are useful after all.

Oh, and afterwards?

The little girl was ...

"taken to hospital by ambulance for check-ups but was well enough to be allowed home"

The baby?

Sussex Police have passed information regarding the un-named mother, from Plumstead, south London, to the Metropolitan Police.

but ...

A spokesman for the Met Police could not confirm whether an investigation would be conducted.

....

Ostrich syndrome?

The other day Mrs Rigby found herself talking at length to somebody who said they were a proactive Liberal Democrat. In amongst all the ordinary conversational stuff Mrs R had asked what they thought about the new government - because it's something people are talking about 'these days'. Any other time Mrs R would have been more careful, and wouldn't have touched politics with a barge pole, especially with somebody she had only just met. Anyhow, this other person said they were quite happy with the coalition because it's given the Lib Dems power, and their policies will be in the government timetable.

They then said their main political concerns were about climate change and reducing CO2 emissions. They thought this government's priority should be to build lots of green, renewable, electricity generators (wind turbines) then get rid of the fossil fuel power stations and decommission the nuclear power stations. They thought there should be cash set aside to research alternative energy sources, including heat sinks and solar power.

They weren't worried about things like money, they said it would be found somewhere because the government is rich.

It's quite hard to be too serious about a person's political views when combatting AGW is the sum total of a person's political aspiration. It's hard to be too serious about an individual's political opinion when they only had a Lib Dem campaign board outside their house because there wasn't a 'Green' candidate - which might help explain stuff like this.

Anyhow, to keep the conversation ticking over we became typically British and turned to the weather - in particular the long, freezing, winter followed by an unusually cold spring with frosts and snow in May, leafless oak trees and, of course, the impact of that volcano nobody can pronounce. All those things are, apparently, our fault - because there are too many people breathing out CO2 and because cows are putting too much methane into the atmosphere. Heavy machinery is causing earthquakes and aircraft are destroying what's left of the atmosphere after the cows have done their worst.

Mrs R is eternally grateful that this article was published today, not last weekend!

The leadership of Climate Camp – which is opposed to flying and airport expansion – have been accused of hypocrisy after they sent two members on a £12,000 mile round-trip to Bolivia.

In retaliation Ben Hart, one of the activists who flew to Bolivia, wrote on Facebook

‘Get over it, if you wanna play this liberal self-denial game...I’ve been vegan for 17 years of my life and gone many years without a car.

‘If I died tomorrow and didn’t take my return flight or any others in the future, the planet would still be being ruined.’

Lovely to see a purist in action, Ben. Fantastic to see somebody prepared to take a stand and make personal sacrifices for what they truly believe in and, of course, for the good of the planet.

Mrs Rigby thinks you're a wonderful example to all the kiddies who've been told their puppies and bunnies will drown because of all the selfish grown-ups!
..........

Oh, and thanks to CF and American television, we know that Bolivia is in South Africa! No, it's true, it must be because it was on the television and CF has a screenshot.

P.S.
Bolivia is in South America. CF's screenshot shows South America, it has been wrongly labelled, which is why it's funny.
South Africa looks like this.

....

Iceland closes Britain.

All British airports will be closed from 12pm today as vast plumes of volcanic ash from Iceland forced the cancellation of thousands of flights.

Apparently

'Following the eruption of a volcano in Iceland earlier today, the Met Office have advised airlines that the ash plume may reach UK air space overnight.

Air traffic controllers in Brussels in charge of strategic management of flights across Europe have issued warnings to pilots that all UK airspace is closed for incoming flights until further notice and London airspace will be completely closed between 11am and at least 7pm.

Looking at the pictures it would seem that there's loads and loads of this ash in the atmosphere, but they say

It cannot be seen from the ground as it blowing across Britain around three miles in the sky.

and

'There is uncertainty about the amount of ash released in the eruption, but it is thought that it will only affect aviation. There is no suggestion there will be any ash falling from the sky.'

Pity that, it'd be nice to see what's capable of closing down our airspace.

Looks as if they got it a bit wrong though, because there's at least one plane in the sky above Rigby Town, and it's 12:30. Maybe they're not planning to land anywhere, they can't, can they, not if all the airports are closed.

....

It'll be hot.

Apparently

the country really is on course for a barbecue summer

So say the people at Positive Weather Solutions, who have managed to be more accurate than the Met Office over the last two years.

Barbecues would be nice, no? Balmy evenings spent in the garden, clutching an overcooked beefburger and a glass of tepid wine? What could be more British?

But, you've got to be 'on message' these days, so Jim from Rennes in France carefully warns that

barbeques are extremely cancerous. So is sunbathing.

Look Jim, we know we're likely to get rusty this summer, so why don't you just go away and annoy the locals.

....

Weather predictions

Long term weather forecasting from Michael Flanders might be more accurate than using the Met Office, and it's a bit more fun too

"A Song of the Weather"

January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow

February's Ice and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet

Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wer't not so unkind

April brings the sweet spring showers
On and on for hours and hours

Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day

June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops

In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No, it's not!

August cold, and dank, and wet -
Brings more rain than any yet

Bleak September's mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood

Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail

Dark November brings the fog -
Should not do it to a dog

Freezing wet December then :

Bloody January again!

"A Song of The Weather" by Michael Flanders OBE (songwriter - Flanders and Swann); a comic variation on Sara Coleridge's 1834 rhyme "January Brings the Snow".

You can listen to the original here onYouTube  (Embedding disabled by request)

weather forecast

I thought this was interesting. Taken from here

Monthly forecasting
The weather beyond about a week ahead stretches even the most experienced weather forecaster. Complex numerical weather forecast models from the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) are run many times for the month (and season) ahead to build up a picture of the likelihood of different weather types affecting the UK.

What do they mean?

Surely they can't mean it's too difficult for experienced forecasters with multi-million pound computer systems to forecast what the weather might be like, after all their climate models have predicted warmer weather for years to come - haven't they?

Chilled oranges and marmalade.

Dick Puddlecote has a piece about snow in Florida, it's here.

Mrs Rigby couldn't, of course, ignore the linked articles which set her off on a happy wander round the internet.

This report says

Viewers in Flagler and Marion counties reported seeing snow flurries just after 5 a.m. Another viewer in Brevard County reported flurries along the beach at Cape Canaveral. Ice reports were also received from Volusia, Orange and Osceola counties.

and this report says

North Florida continues to face one of the coldest winters in its history. (my bold) Wednesday, the NWS center in Jacksonville braved 21 degree (-6C) weather, the city’s coldest temperature on record, Schuler said.

“It hasn’t been that cold since 1884,” he said.

"History" - now there's an interesting sort of word. People write about "history" as if history is something that never gets changed, but Mrs R recalls reading somewhere or other that history is always written by the winners, by the people who end up in charge.

If she was being really picky she'd contact the person who wrote that article to ask them when, precisely, the weather 'history' of North Florida started.

She'd ask if it started in fourteen hundred and ninety two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, or if this history started in 1513 when Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa called it Florida (because of the nice flowers) or if it was in 1531 when Tristán de Luna y Arellano landed at Pensacola, or if it was a bit later and after usable thermometers had been invented.

Maybe she'd be told that the weather history of Florida started earlier than that, maybe it was so long ago that there weren't any ex-Europeans to see the cold snow and ice and write about it, and maybe she'd be told that weather happened before man was around to experience it - and clever 21st century record keepers and analysts use things like tree ring data to work out whether was cold or not (the annual growth rings are close together when it's too cold for a tree to grow very much) - a bit like the chap who used information tucked away in tree growth rings to make a graph.

Because of all these 'maybes' Mrs Rigby has tried to second guess what the journalist means, and she thinks they're actually talking about the fairly recent history of Florida, and only about the weather in one little part of it, otherwise, being really picky, 'one of the coldest winters in its history' would be cross referencing against weather way back when it got to look like Florida because of continental drift, erosion and so on - which was millions of years ago.

The best thing about history is that it includes yesterday, and most people can remember yesterday. They can also remember things that happened earlier in their lives. So, although Mrs R wasn't around way back in 1884, (we're back to the article in case you're confused), she was around when there were some awful snowstorms in Florida that wiped out the orange crops and made orange juice more expensive - and she knows it's happened more than once.

There are a few sites that mention things like that, and earlier snow storms too - they were very easy to find but Mrs R is resorting to Wikipedia which might not be the most accurate of sites because articles are often written by ordinary folk who have a lot of spare time, but it does at least give a general idea and has everything all in one place.

Here's a quick quote, before somebody gets in there and changes history :-

Snow in Florida is a rare occurrence, especially on the peninsula. During the Great Blizzard of 1899, Florida experienced blizzard conditions; the Tampa Bay area had "gulf-effect" snow, similar to lake-effect snow in the Great Lakes region. During the 1899 blizzard was the only time the temperature in Florida is known to have fallen below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (−18 °C).

The most widespread snowfall in Florida history occurred on January 19, 1977, when snow fell over much of the state, with flurries as far south as Homestead. Snow flurries also fell on Miami Beach for the only time in recorded history.

A hard freeze in 2003 brought "ocean-effect" snow flurries to the Atlantic coast as far south as Cape Canaveral.

The 1993 Superstorm brought blizzard conditions to the panhandle ...

Mrs R does note that the temperatures mentioned are not the same as those in the newspaper article, but thinks it helps make her point. You can read more here and here .

There's more about the snowy "Superstorm" of March 1993 - which made some snow land on Florida - here , and something from NYT about the Blizzard of 1888.

As for the weathermen and women and their, ahem, forecasts, how about this :-

Mark and Barbara Willard were at home in Wickford, England two weeks ago checking the weather forecast on the Internet before packing for their trip to Orlando — sunny and 70 degrees.

On Saturday afternoon they had the hoods on their brand new coats pulled tight around their heads as the walked down the International Drive tourist strip. The weather: 35 degrees and cloudy with a chance of icy rain or even snow.

Maybe these weather forecasters, who've been busy telling us we're all going to fry in 10, 20, 30, 40 or more years time, are now being a bit less warmist, because some of them have said it's going to snow in 'much of Spain'.

If they're right then they've given us enough warning to stockpile some marmalade.

Thanks Met Office!

According to the BBC at 18:49 GMT, Thursday, 7 January 2010

The Met Office said temperatures could fall to as low as -20C in England.

Do they really call this a weather forecast?

Mrs R can look out of her window, she can see the snow and she can see the clear starry skies and she could see the moon lying on its back, so she has a darned good idea that tonight is going to be extremely cold

She would have expected the Met Office to have been able to predict this "cold snap" more than a couple of days in advance - something pointed out by Andrew Neil when he interviewed John Hirst, the chap who gets paid a small fortune for running the Met Office. Andrew Neil wanted to know why the USA got weather warnings right, but the renowned (and very expensive) Met Office didn't provide an equivalent service for the UK.

Maybe information gleaned via Not a sheep would help, because surely the power supply people get more warning than us mere mortals.

It might be worth checking out this power supply/demand site to work out what the weather will be like. (Unfortunately Mrs R hasn't a clue what the proper name is, there doesn't seem to be a title anywhere.)

Okay, I know, it's getting a bit stale and a bit sameish, but my continued bashing away at the Met Office for being useless is really just a symptom of my/our general unhappiness of/with/about the way things are being done (or not done) in this country right now.

Weather forecasters are there to provide a service, and an accurate service too - because if they don't it means lives can be put at risk.

If there are likely to be storms, whether wind or rain, they should tell us.

If heavy snow or frost is likely, they should tell us.

They should tell us these things long enough in advance so we can make up our own minds about what we do or don't do - because some of us can use our initiative, we're not all totally dependent on government to make decisions about the minutiae of our everyday lives.

If we know what weather is on the way we can make up our minds about whether to take a long journey in a car, maybe to try to visit a very sick relative in a hospital a couple of hundred miles away - and that's the sort of quandary facing us Rigbys at the moment, and the Met Office is doing damn all to help.

Aside from that, we pay them for a service. The service they are supposed to provide is meant to help us decide whether or not it's a good idea to take a long walk in the countryside, maybe go out in a small boat, or even whether or not to plan an outdoor party.

But they don't seem to care, all they want to do is bamboozle us with an agenda designed to make us believe the planet is going to fry - but even if it does, they tell us it won't happen tomorrow, and frankly it's tomorrow that's important to most people, who want to know whether they will be able to get to the shops, whether their children will be able to go to school or college and whether or not they should get out of bed early to try to go to work.

And to make it all worse, Mrs R has just seen a government funded "information advert" telling her and her family not to waste water because the planet is running out of the wet stuff.

Honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you!

When snow melts it turns into water. If we hadn't had this load of snow we'd probably have had lots and lots of rain - like Spain and Portugal.

If the Met Office had made the right forecast at the right time then this advert might not have been shown, and might not, therefore, have been so utterly and ridiculously inappropriate.

No salt and no snow ploughs.

From the Universality of Cheese, via Charlotte Gore

Now Gordon the North Britisher wouldn’t do this, would he?

Not that I’m the kind of chap to comment on unsubstantiated rumours……….but word reaches me that a certain cooncil official, maybe in the South of Scotland, in a rare display of initiative and foresight, realising that said cooncil was rapidly running out of salt for for the roads, contacted the people in the Welsh salt mines and placed an order for a sizeable amount of the anti-slippy salt.

A local haulage company were allegedly asked to nip down to Wales and pick up a convoy of the salt to get us through the next part of what we like to refer to as Winter.

Upon arrival, much chagrin ensued as the tired truckers were told to Ecclefechen off, as the company had allegedly been told there was no salt for them, as HM Government in ThatLondon had ordered that all salt be retained for the exclusive use of the South East of England. Also the drivers supposedly were told that the company were under explicit instructions not to sell any road grit to local authorities or the Scottish Government.

Michty, I suggest a trip to local chippy and some bulk purchasing of brine if this story is at all true….

If it's true it's rather an odd sort of abuse of authority isn't it - stopping people from being allowed to buy what they've ordered and are all too willing to pay for?

But then Charlotte also says this

Caught briefly on the radio – the Government intends to use Emergency powers to bail out feckless, useless councils who’ve found themselves utterly unprepared for snow by raiding the grit and salt supplies of useful, competent well prepared councils who’ve still got supplies.

Ah, "emergency powers" - they had to come out of Pandora's Box before the election, so this is a good excuse.

Here in Rigbytown the situation is fairly horrible, the snow the Met Office said we wouldn't have has stopped food getting to the supermarkets. Schools are closed and we've been told that University term will be late starting - because nobody can get there.

When Mrs R was little there was snow, lots of it too, but there was no question of either not going to work or school. Somehow we all managed to eat and keep warm too - but then we hadn't been brainwashed into relying on central government to tell us what to do, and when.

The village of Cow Ark in Yorkshire has been cut off for 22 days - what does the local council say?

County Councillor Keith Young, who has a responsibility for highways, gave residents little comfort, asking them to 'bear with us'.

He said: ‘At the moment we have a very extreme set of circumstances and the priority is to keep the main roads clear.

‘As soon as we can we will treat the other roads we will do but we will not jeopardise our grit stocks.

‘My message to the residents in Cow Ark is that we are not doing this deliberately and I am sure their community spirit will see them through.’

"Community Spirit" my eye - let's see the same councillor stand in front of a people living on a tough inner city estate and tell them to look after themselves. He and his council are ignoring their responsibilities and they're doing it because they can. They know the people of Cow Ark - who contribute to the public purse - aren't important or vocal enough to count. And they're probably all British too, so won't fit any particular government quota of need.

The current situation is a terrible indication of how bad things are in Britain just now - for the world to see that we can't cope with snow and that some councils are willing to leave communities to suffer. Where are the emergency helicopter drops of food and water? Those things used to happen when Mrs R was a girl, but not now, not in a cash-strapped Britain that's more bothered about sending money abroad instead of looking after its' own population.

Looking around news from the rest of the northern hemisphere it doesn't seem that any other countries have ground to a halt, and it doesn't look as if other people are being told to stay indoors.

Is it any wonder that the country has slipped to 25th in the list of "Best places in the world to live" - behind Uruguay, Hungary, Czech Republic and Lithuania.

The people who draw up these lists aren't stupid, and they read the news too, they can see what's happening in Britain. They can see how the population is being bullied and cowed into submission by an increasing list of petty rules and regulations that should be laughed at and ignored. They can see a government that's involved itself in the petty minutiae of everyday life - from how to wipe your nose to what you should eat, whilst ignoring the bigger issues facing the country - such as a recession, unemployment, over-reliance on benefits and excessive immigration ... and being prepared for Winter, something that happens every single year.

P.S.
The Mail's story about Cow Ark seems to have changed a bit, quoting

Ribble Valley Council leader Michael Ranson said: ‘There needs to be a complete rethink on the county council's policy on dealing with the sort of extreme weather we have seen.

‘We know that the council cannot deal with every last road in the area, but with the help of farmers they can clear them. More has to be done to help people who live in these very rural locations.

‘In the past farmers have been offered expenses to clear roads that the county council cannot get to. This must be done now and should already have happened.’

Mrs R thinks he's got a point, she also thinks that what he's said raises questions about both funding and spending, because Michael Ranson, Leader of Ribble Valley Council, is over-ruled by a County Councillor, even though

road safety [is] among Ribble Valley Borough Council's priorities for 2009/10.

How can a local council have any sort of priorities when they can, apparently, be blocked by the chaps with bigger wages, and bigger budgets?

Predicting snow.

Amazing isn't it!

Last year we were told that

Britain’s gas storage capacity is 4.3 billion cubic metres, providing no more than 15 days of supply

On Tuesday 5th January the National Grid announced an energy alert - maybe not enough gas to go heat all the fires and all the central heating systems and all the power stations unless somebody got some more gas from somewhere, fast.

Here's what the National Grid site says

The purpose of the Gas Balancing Alert (GBA) is to provide a signal to the market that demand-side reduction and/or additional supplies may be required to avoid the risk of entering into a Network Gas Supply Emergency. The trigger level for a Gas Balancing Alert is based on a combination of the absolute Supply & Demand levels and the impact of a potential breach of a Safety Monitor.

Hmm, well, we knew there wasn't a lot of storage space, we knew there wasn't much in February 2009 - but what was done to fix it? What department took responsibility to make sure Britain would survive a period of high demand - such as prolonged cold weather? It would seem nobody did anything, maybe they didn't think they needed to - probably because the Met Office predicted both a mild winter and a period of warm weather for the foreseeable future.

Over the last 24 hours people have been running around like headless chickens, emptying supermarket shelves of almost anything they can get their hands on, including torches, thermal underwear, thermos flasks and sleeping bags. Some people have resorted to using cat litter to 'grit' icy garden paths because there's no salt to buy, and have ended up making a terrible mess of their carpets. Halfords is doing its best to keep up with demand for antifreeze, but deliveries are held up by snow. And guess what, these retailers weren't able to plan ahead - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

Where the Rigby family lives it's difficult to get any fresh food, which is a bit of a nuisance because we emptied our fridge before Christmas and could do with refilling it again now we're back home. We Rigbys are without potatoes, carrots, green vegetables and not surprisingly there's no chance of buying salad of any sort. We have no milk, no pet food and very little breakfast cereal - and no prospect of getting any because the supermarkets (which are our only food source, all the little shops are long gone from Rigbytown) aren't getting deliveries because the roads aren't working properly. There's nothing to put in the Rigby's bread making machine because other people emptied the supermarkets of flour and bread mixes. The supermarket looked, in Mrs R's mind, like something out of the worst time of Soviet Russia.

It's a good job we've got a decent sized freezer and a cupboard stocked with things in tins, otherwise we'd be very, very, hungry.

Why has this happened?

Mrs R thinks it's happened because the supermarkets weren't able to predict demand - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

The main roads through Rigby town aren't too bad, but pavements are treacherous and side roads have been ignored by the council - because the council hasn't got enough salt or grit to deal with them, and anyway they're too bothered about making sure the motorways work. They probably haven't got enough salt or grit because they didn't think they'd need any - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

Who had to rescue people stranded on the motorways?

Up to 1,000 stranded motorists had to be rescued by the Army today after some of the heaviest snowfalls in 20 years left drivers trapped in their cars overnight.

It was the Army, the same one that joined the bits of Workington together again after their bridge got washed away and the same Army that's had it's finances messed with, whilst the office dwellers of the MoD got bonuses.

There seems to be a pattern here somewhere, because it's reported that the chap in charge, John Hirst, gets given a whopping financial bonus, taking his salary to :-

between £195,000 and £200,000 in pay and bonuses in 2008/9

and

The figure is a 25 per cent increase on the £155,000 to £160,000 "pay equivalent" for Mr Hirst in 2007/8. Mr Hirst had joined midway through the previous financial year in September 2007.

Now I don't care how much this man earns, as long as he does his job properly. I don't care how much anybody earns, as long as they do their job properly - more especially somebody who's paid out of the public purse.

Mr Hirst heads an organisation that has publicised and encouraged belief in global warming theories, and that has linked breathing out CO2 to climate change. Even the top Google weblink says "Met Office: Weather and Climate Change". Mrs R doesn't think the Met Office's job to be involved in either politics or pressure groups, she thinks they should concentrate on getting short term weather forecasts right.

They used to be able to do it.

The Met Office was originally set up to help seafarers. In 1944 the forecaster's strands of seaweed, thermometers, maps and barometers were capable of accurately predicting a clear weather window that would allow the Normandy Landings to go ahead. These days, with their multi-million supercomputer, they can't even tell us when we're to expect enough snow to bring the country to its knees.

Is it too much to ask that high-earning Mr Hirst does his job, and ensures that the Met Office does its job properly too - so that supermarkets can get the right stuff onto their shelves, so that local councils can stock up on salt and grit and so that we ordinary folk can have a good idea of what we might see when we look out of the window in the morning?

It shouldn't be too hard for them because, after all, they reckon they've got clever brains that can predict both climate and weather for 50+ years in the future!

When Mrs Rigby was little her Mum told her that whatever happened to the weather in America was likely to happen in the UK within a week or so - and in the last few weeks all sorts of US snowfall records have been broken. WattsUpWithThat tells us that ... over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in USA. Even Florida and Miami are expecting the "longest stretch of cold weather in 15 to 25 years", so I sort of expected a bit of snow here.

And now, based on her own life experience coupled with her Mum's words of wisdom, Mrs R predicts that the current cold spell, along with the snow, will probably last more than a week - and no, there's no supercomputer at Rigby Towers, just a good memory and brains that still work.

Let's see if I get it right.