What's A Good Place To Look For Weather Conditions This Winter?

[AB Editor]

Morning all,

I wondered where you might look to find very long range forecasts - for example, if I want to know if this December is likely to be very cold, or just cold?

Is there anywhere online which offers this kind of service?

[Hypognosis]

ED,

if you have money to burn, you could try Piers Corbyn's weather forecasting service. I do not know the prices, nor how far ahead you can request a forecast for but he uses observations of sunspot numbers as a basis and the last time I heard anyone cast an opinion as to their accuracy, it was favourable. On the other hand, that was a different decade, possibly even a different millenium.

On the one hand, I hate him for not sharing his research findings or methods for the good of humanity but, on the other hand, I also understand that he has to earn a crust somehow or other and every inventor should be allowed to get the full benefit of their patented works.

[TheOtherHalf]

If the pond you are fishing in starts freezing over, you know its getting colder

[jim360]

Seems that Piers Corbyn primarily predicts doom and gloom -- in which case he's always going to be right sometimes. But on the face of it (closed methods, harsh response to criticism) I don't think you should take his predictions all that seriously. They will sometimes be right and sometimes wrong, but as long as there is no way to subject his methods to scrutiny because he doesn't reveal them -- well, that's just not the way any respectable scientist should do things. Which is a pity because it could well be that there is some merit to his claims. How can anyone know, though, without knowing how he arrived at them?

[Hypognosis]

@jim

Come to think of it, it would have been within a skeptic's discussion forum that the description I am recalling was brought up, so you're not the first person I've (not)met to view him with dubiety (if there is such a word?)

The gist was that, if you wanted to know whether your garden party or wedding reception was likely to be spoiled by the weather, you could find out for a small fee.

Of course, since there is a preponderance of these things in June/July/August, it's a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel task to recommend "the third week in June" or the "second week in July" as being good weeks to hold the event, take the money and not suffer much risk of any comebacks.

If the customer enquires about the weather on a specific day, however, that could be perceived as a greater challenge than picking "good week/bad week" except if you see it as a binary situation "sunny=good/rain=bad" making it as easy as a coin toss to get right.

Establishing whether his forecasts were consistently better than chance would require months' worth of forecasts and MetOffice data to compare it with. Nobody has the money, let alone the time.

Also, with solar activity mooted to be the foundation of his forecasting techniques, you would think it would be the gross (global-scale) climate mechanisms being impacted, leaving him only able to say, in general terms fair/foul, windy/calm, warm/cold and only at the scale of countries/regions, as opposed to the Met Office forecasts which can indicate rain showers in one town and all-day sunshine only 50 miles away.