Forecasters who get weather wrong feel heat

The Times ^ | February 25, 2005 | Jeremy Page

[MadIvan]

WE HAVE all fantasised about it from time to time — when caught in a freak gale or rainstorm — but Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, has finally done it. Put simply, he is punishing weather forecasters who get it wrong.

Mr Luzhkov told a weekly meeting of the city government that the Moscow Weather Bureau would receive no more funding until it agreed to allow the city to fine it for inaccurate forecasts. “We are paying and would like to receive a quality product. Instead of that, you are giving us bulls***,” he said.

Mr Luzhkov is known for his obsessive interest in the weather and his administration regularly seeds the clouds around Moscow to clear the skies ahead of national holidays.

However, the idea of fining forecasters was first proposed last year by Sergei Shoigu, the Emergency Situations Minister, who is responsible for dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters. When severe flooding threatened the Siberian city of Irkutsk in April, he said weather forecasters should also be held responsible for protecting the population.

It was not the first time Mr Luzhkov has vented his spleen at Russian weather forecasters.

In June 1998 he accused them of “telling lies” after a severe thunderstorm brought down trees across Moscow.

The previous year, when record-breaking snowfalls hit Moscow, he threatened to fire all the weathermen at Rosgidromet, the federal meteorological agency, and began campaigning for a separate weather service for Moscow.

However, the city’s weather bureau, set up in 1999, does not seem to have fared any better in his eyes.

This year the bureau failed to predict several bad spells of weather that caught short municipal services. On January 28 the capital experienced the heaviest snowfall on a single day since weather records began in the 19th century. Planes were diverted from the city’s airports, traffic was snarled and pedestrians had to wade through metre-high drifts.

“We had expected abundant snowfalls ... although we expected them to occur earlier and be, of course, not so great,” Pyotr Aksyonov, the first deputy mayor, said.

In other words, the right type of snow — at the wrong time.

[MadIvan]

We'll have to see if this improves forecasts. ;)

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Ping!

[xJones]

If we fired every weather forecaster in Texas that got it wrong, there wouldn't be any forecasters left. And nobody in their right minds would take the jobs to replace them.

I doubt the Moscow area weather is that much more predictable. Napolean and Hitler had some problems with it.:)

[mwyounce]

"Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

-- Calvin Coolidge Mark Twain

[endthematrix]

"It's a matter of smart economics," says Valery Stasenko, head of Russia's weather modification department. "The entire city transport system comes to a halt when there is a lot of snow. If we send up our pilots, the city will save lots of money." Mobilizing the aircraft will cost a fraction of the nearly $5 million that Moscow spends daily during the winter to clear up snow. The NEXT CITY

"Deploying all of Korshunkov's [snow removal] machinery costs nearly a million dollars a day, and even clearing snow away at top speed, it can take three days after a big storm to dump it all into the Moscow River or onto stretches of wasteland reserved for the purpose."

"Stasenko says it would cost only about $250,000 a day to mobilize the half dozen planes he would need to fly into oncoming cloudbanks and seed them with silver iodide, liquid nitrogen, or dry ice, encouraging the crystallization of snowflakes and snowfalls outside the city limits." One Man's Winter Forecast For Moscow: No Snow

[taxesareforever]

Forecasters in Washington State can't get 5 day forecasts right 90% of the time and now they are issuing 14 day forecasts. Who do they think they are kidding? Is news that slow?

[xJones]

This reminds me of an old Tanya Tucker song, "Lizzie and the Rain Man":

Step back non-believers
Or the rain will never come
Someone start that fire burning
Somebody beat the drum
He said some may think I'm crazy
For making all these claims
But I swear before this day is over
You folks are gonna see some rain

[Neanderthal]

Remember Steve martin in "LA Story?" The joke was that there is no weather in LA and he assured his boss that the weather would be fine for golf on Saturday. Of course it poured and he got fired . . .

[Desdemona]

This guy should be glad he doesn't live in the midwest.

Never seen a bigger bunch of professional liars than the weather forcasters.;)

[Libloather]

Mr Luzhkov told a weekly meeting of the city government that the Moscow Weather Bureau would receive no more funding until it agreed to allow the city to fine it for inaccurate forecasts.

Can we do this to the global warming alarmists in the public schools?

[Mudboy Slim]

LOL...Socialism at work...dammit, somebody's gotta be to blame fer whatever...where the heck are the trial attorneys??

FReegards...MUD