John Walker's Electronic House

In case anyone thought I was kidding.

UPDATE! The weatherman on BBC Disappoints West just said, “As for tomorrow, that’s in the laps of the gods.” So there you have it folks.

So after 15 minutes of some very pretty snow about three hours before it was forecast, there’s been nothing. In fact, it’s rained. And then at about 3pm the Met Office issued severe weather warnings for the South West starting at 6pm, Bath to receive 15cm overnight, terrible conditions, all roads and rail to stop.

This is now the revised pattern for snowfall tonight:

It’s actually curling up and around Bath. The previous 6pm blizzard is now showing a forecast for rain.

This is my point. They absolutely, categorically cannot predict the weather. They cannot get it right for three hours in the future. And yet every day they announce what it will be in five days time. It sometimes is, because if you roll a dice you’ll sometimes guess which number it will land on. But they cannot predict it.

Bath was due to be the epicentre for dramatic snowfall. Now we are likely to be rained on.

These forecasters are con-artists, and we should be treating what they do with the same contempt as homeopaths and psychics. And no, if it randomly happens to snow tonight, it won’t change anything. Whatever weather happens to happen, at least one of their rotating forecasts today will have been wildly wrong. They’ve predicted absolute polar opposites (or should I say pole-to-equator opposites) in the last six hours, London receiving four complete 180 flip-flops about whether it would receive any snow, and the South West now apparently safe from what we were warned would be the most dangerous snowfall in decades, er, two hours ago. So can we put an end to this idiocy, and treat those who claim to predict the weather with the same disgust and disdain we we do those who claim to predict the future.

And yes. I’m really bloody pissed off it’s not snowing.

Right, I’ve had enough. There is nothing else in the universe that we would tolerate being as wrong as British weather forecasts.

I recognise the problem. It’s about predicting the events of a literally chaotic system, taking place on a small island surrounded by seas. That makes it incredibly difficult to accurately predict the movement of warm and cold fronts as they swirl in from various directions. It’s so difficult, in fact, that they can’t do it. I don’t blame the weather forecaster for this. I don’t blame anyone for the unpredictability of chaos. (I’m generous like that.) But I DO believe it’s time to stop letting these half-blind soothsayers from getting to pretend it works.

In an age when the terrified BBC can’t put a programme on air before its producers have filled in multiple compliance forms for fear of being caught lying about something, surely the weather forecast should have to have some massive caption running along the bottom of the screen reading: “WARNING: AT BEST THIS IS A WILD GUESS.”

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Everybody who spends as much time stuck inside their own head as I understands those bizarre compulsions to do things that might not be entirely in line with that which is sensible. The ridiculous idea that fills your mind, either to be acted upon or shaken loose before you get in trouble. I think the most terrible example in recent times was when waiting for the toilet on my flight back from Seattle a few weeks back. I was stood next to the emergency exit door, with that deliciously big handle, and the words written in red with the chunky red arrow, instructing you to rotate it through the full 180 degrees. How incredibly fun it would be to turn a handle so large and appealing, to tug to begin its motion, and then satisfactorily clunk it into place. It would be like turning the lever handle on a giant bank vault, or opening a secret cave in an ancient tomb. I cannot imagine a more fantastic handle to turn. Except this one would of course lead to the deaths of hundreds of people on board, including me, and the plane crashing out of the sky.

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I’m pondering the approach I will take for a story for Rock, Paper, Shotgun – the small spin-off blog from this site that I allow others to hang around on – about the role sleep plays in gaming. This may sound preposterous, but there are at least two interesting stories to tell, and the subject of game-related dreams is one all gamers can relate to. But I feel an overwhelming urge to write the post as a personal account of my own fears of sleep, making it all about me with slivers of science and theory occasionally sliding in. However, this would raise the ire of those for whom the Important Matter Of Gaming Discussion should not be sullied by personal account.

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