Unexpected rain

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The weather forecast said it would rain from three o'clock in the afternoon onwards so I calculated that it would be fine to cycle to my appointment for half past nine and cycle home at about ten thirty or eleven o'clock.  No need for wet weather gear I thought, summer trousers and a light sweater over my short sleeved shirt should be enough for the cool of the morning. And it was. A pleasant cycle ride down the drove roads, past the wheat stubble, the flocking swallows and the foraging collared doves and tree sparrows. But, as I chatted after my meeting at about quarter to eleven I looked out of the window and saw steady drizzle falling. The predictions of the Met Office had, once again this summer, proved hopeless and several hours early the rain had arrived.

Aiming to miss the heavy rain that was likely (or was it!) to follow the light rain I made a swift exit and cycled home, head down, legs pumping, through the steady precipitation. My front was quickly wet and my glasses were soon obscured by raindrops. But I pressed on and got home damp; the sort of damp that in winter would have had me changing clothes but which in late summer found me letting them dry naturally and quite quickly still on me. Taking my glasses off and setting them down before wiping them I saw the small droplets of rain on the lenses and quickly snapped today's photograph.

Just as it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, so too is it hopeless rain that can't produce a photograph or two.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Raindrops on Glasses
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm macro (120mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Selling the weather

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Over three years ago in a post called, "Banish weather forecasters" I lamented a number of recent efforts to "sex up" the weather forecasts that we receive in the UK. Since that time our weather forecasting has gone into overdrive with additional measures to capture the attention of the public, politicians, the press, advertisers and weather forecasting rivals. For example, we now have regular "severe weather warnings" even though we live in temperate latitudes where our climate is marked by an absence of extremes. If fog is predicted the forecast is plastered with yellow warning triangles bearing black exclamation marks to draw our attention to the coming event; this despite the fact that fogs occur every autumn, also at other times of year, and is obvious to all as soon as you step out of your front door. The same warnings accompany strong winds, heavy rain, frost etc, none of which are unusual occurrences in our islands.

The most recent gimmick to get us to give more attention to the weather forecast is the naming of storms to "raise awareness of severe weather". This device, borrowed from parts of the world that name hurricanes etc, serves little useful purpose. For everyone who is heedless of the weather that it manages to alert, there are more who are unnecessarily alarmed by the screaming headlines and warnings of dire peril that invariably follow such an announcement. Today's photograph shows the fine clouds of the sunset before the arrival of storm "Barney" (surely too cuddly a name for a potentially destructive force), the second named event of the autumn.  It was suggested it may bring gusts of wind up to 80 mph "in places", though looking at the detail of the forecast, in most areas they will be substantially less strong, something that will escape the notice of many. I suppose I shouldn't get worked up about this kind of headline grabbing. It is, after all, a characteristic of all the media today. Can it be long before "listicles" are a regular feature of the weather forecast?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.8mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.) cropped
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pine trees and weather forecasting

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I think that if retirement ever becomes boring - an unlikely eventuality - then I will become a weather forecaster. On the basis of the accuracy (or should I say inaccuracy) of recent forecasts for my part of the world I think my efforts have every chance of reaching the current high (or should I say low) standard on offer.

A couple of days ago, on the promise of sunshine and cloud with long spells of unbroken sun, we went walking at Woodhall Spa hoping to get some well-lit, autumn-themed, landscape and tree photographs. However, the forecast sun made a couple of fleeting appearances and then remained hidden by a blanket of cloud for the rest of our time there. On the day I write this we went shopping, me without a coat because no rain was forecast all day, and I was precipitated upon! These are only two of the many mis-forecasts of recent weeks. However, today's papers tell me all will soon be well because the Meteorological Office has ordered a new £97 million super computer. This will have a prodigious number-crunching capacity enabling previously unimagined quantities of data to be processed. The technological behemoth will spit out forecasts of undreamed of accuracy. Or so they say. We'll see.

On my Woodhall Spa walk I managed to get a couple of shots of passing interest. The stack of tree trunks appealed for the unexpected colours on display. They'd clearly been there a while so hints of green are not to be unexpected. But what about the blue?  Is it natural or was it applied in the cutting? I think it's the former. It seemed a good photograph to pair with the shot of some trees before they succumb to the woodsman's saw.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm (112mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:11250
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Banish weather forecasters

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In the UK, over the years, the profile of the TV weather forecaster has risen to the point where they are now seen as familiar figures with names and "personalities". Their exposure to the public now goes well beyond telling us about the weather and exchanging a few cheery banalities with the news presenters when their spot has ended. Some undertake public engagements, others feature in newspaper and magazine articles. Their dress, utterances, private lives and more are presented to the public by the media with the assumption that we will be interested. How has this change come about?

There seems to be, on the part of television in particular, a desire to make the weather forecast more exciting, more interesting, something to stay tuned for rather than a respite from regular programming when the audience might go off and make a cup of tea. The presenters themselves have been complicit in this. The problem with it is not just the flim-flam associated with the cult of personality: more importantly the weather forecasts are regularly skewed as a consequence. So, wet weather is presented as "bad", hot sunny weather as "good" or to use the favoured description of one male BBC presenter, "glorious". Of course, quite a few sectors of society (farmers, ice cream sales people, gardeners, etc) will not share this point of view but they seem of little consequence. Continuing "bad weather" is often reported with relish to the point where the forecaster appears to adopt the guise of a Jeremiah. Then there's the technology; the swooping camera, the animated symbols, and the specific forecast for whatever is the current newsworthy sports event. If the weather is stable (or in the presenter's eyes, "boring") the forecast is often livened up by a report about extreme weather somewhere else in the world. Why we need to know about Indonesian typhoons, mid-western tornadoes, droughts in Australia, or flooding in Bangladesh during the UK weather forecast just because the presenter needs to "sex it up" a bit, I really don't know. My answer is to banish the presenters, to have a simple voice-over connected to a visual presentation of the current weather and the weather that is anticipated for the next twenty four hours. That way we might get a little more sanity in the forecast and people might take notice of it rather than the wide-eyed, enthusiastic, over-gesticulating presenter.

Today we went to Peterborough to do a little shopping. The weather forecast was accurate I'm happy to report and we had the anticipated rain. I hope tomorrow the dry weather that was promised materialises because I have some hedges to trim. The subject of today's photograph is the Old Guildhall of 1671 in the Market Place at Peterborough. It is flanked by the church of St John the Baptist which was rebuilt in 1402-7 from the material of the old church and the nave of the now no longer extant, St Thomas. I used the medieval Outer Gate of the cathedral precinct as shelter from the rain as I took my photograph of the damp scene.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 84mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Weather forecasting

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The ease or difficulty of weather forecasting depends a great deal on location.The weather of continental areas in the centres of large land masses is, by and large, reasonably predictable. The weather forecast of a western maritime location, such as that of the British Isles, is much harder to get right. The Gulf Steam together with pressure systems and their associated winds and precipitation make accurate forecasting a challenge. It also helps to account for the frequency with which the weather is a topic of conversation in these islands!

Given that, I'm at a loss to understand why the UK's Meteorological Office publishes forecasts that aim to be accurate for any three hours at locations that may be only a dozen or so miles apart, based on recording stations that are spread much more thinly. Not surprisingly these detailed forecasts are often wrong. Equally unsurprisingly they are updated regularly during the day reducing their value as longer term forecasts.

In my experience some parts of the UK's forecasts are better than others. Wind direction seems to be the most reliable element followed by wind strength. The extent of cloud cover and whether or not the sun will shine is less accurate. However, in my part of the world the forecast for precipitation is often abysmal. Or perhaps, living in one of England's drier areas, during a year when we have had very low rainfall, it just seems that way. The main point I want to make is that I would be less critical of the forecasts and would actually find them more useful if they dispensed with their spurious accuracy, were less detailed, and better reflected the uncertainty that is inherent in weather forecasting in the UK. The fact is that if you see the weather will be sunshine and cloud at 1.00pm with light rain at 4.00pm, then this doesn't transpire exactly as forecast, and you've made arrangements based on the prediction, then you are more likely to notice (and be critical) than if the forecast was for "changeable" (sun/clouds/occasional light rain) for the whole period of the afternoon.

Today's photograph was taken on a day when the forecasters promised rain but delivered none. The sky certainly looked like it would produce rain with thin, watery clouds and intermittent denser patches veiling the sun. Passing a wind farm I thought it might be an opportunity to try a shot with my widest lens at 17mm, and compare it with an earlier version of this subject when the widest lens at my disposal was 22mm (35mm equivalent).

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Weather forecasting and entertainment

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In an ideal world the mission of any television station is to entertain and to inform. Pretty much every channel thinks it does this, but we know that many are ditching the "inform" bit, and many more are failing with the "entertain" bit even though that, nominally, constitutes most of their output. The BBC has a reputation for achieving this dual focus as well as any broadcaster does, but there are times when I think it simply loses the plot through trying too hard.

Take weather forecasting. You'd think that here the main aim would be to inform the public what the weather was likely to be, both where they lived and elsewhere in the country. I imagine the BBC fondly thinks it does just that. Well, I'm here to tell you and them that it fails miserably in this simple task. Firstly, its presenters not only talk too much so that people stop listening, they also talk gibberish. I swear that my wife will put a plant pot through the screen the next time a presenter talks about "treacherous roads", and I'm likely to burst my lungs screaming at the next mention of "an organised band of showers approaching from the west." Organised by whom? God? The Meteorological Office? And how can a road assume human attributes? Then there's the ridiculous graphics that involves us lurching drunkenly over the British Isles as if in a wayward satellite as the presenter hurriedly tries to make what they are saying correspond with the region in view. In spring they punctuate bulletins with "Spring Watch" and invite viewers to call in with their sightings of the first primroses or swallows. What's that got to do with informing us about the weather? It would make as much sense - maybe more, and could be more entertaining - to invite first viewings of T-shirts, short sleeves, or bikini tops. But what irritates the most is the persistent attempts to make the weather forecasts entertaining. Instead of accepting that weather just is what it is, they seek to magnify it and make it appear a malevolent force. So, we have alerts and warnings about wind, rain, sun, fog and snow, exhortations not to travel unless absolutely necessary, furrowed brows, grimaces and anthropomorphising. They don't appear to be trying to alert us to inclement weather, so much as scare us stiff with their cataclysmic visions of what might be. In recent days the weather forecasters have not only got it wrong, saying that the snow will get worse before it gets better: they've also fomented a clearing of supermarket shelves by viewers who have been panicked into stocking up for the next spell of "white hell". In the event a thaw has started!

My suggestion for remedying this state of affairs is to do away with the Jeremiah forecasters, and replace them with a screen divided into four. This would show the country's weather at the time of the forecast, then six hours later, then 12 hours later and finally 24 hours later. Will such a thing happen? No chance.

Today's shot - my last church image for a while you'll be glad to hear - shows St Swithin* at Bicker after the most recent heavy snow fall. I'm aiming for the definitive snowy photograph of this building, and I'm confident I'm getting closer to it. This one was taken about half an hour after the snow had ceased, and there's nothing nicer than getting out in it before too many footprints have marked the perfect whiteness.

St Swithin*/St Swithun: this church styles itself using both spellings, so I follow its example!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spicing up the weather

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Several years ago the British press reported that a television weather presenter, Sian Lloyd, had studied Thai dancers in order to make her own hand movements more expressive. Once you knew that fact it was no longer possible to remember anything she said about the weather because you spent the whole time watching her hands tracing arabesques and curlycues, fingers moving almost individually, as they gracefully indicated the sweep of the rain and the path of the wind as it passed over our islands.

At the time I remember wondering whether the other presenters should take a leaf out of her book and search around for inspiration to enliven their own presentations. Maybe one could base his approach on Kung Fu, alternating slow-motion swipes to show the passage of cloud across the country with fast, head-high kicks to indicate the areas of Scotland that would be subject to sub-zero temperatures. Another might inject a dull forecast that spoke about low-level stratus and fog by singing her script in the gospel-style, her body swaying from side to side to illustrate a gentle breeze, punctuating her exposition with alleluyahs and hands thrust high to heaven, at any indication of a sunny day to come.

I was thinking about this as I sat in my study looking at my window. It is flanked by gathered curtains (inherited when I bought the house) and has vertical blinds to keep glare off my computer monitor. Looking at it the other day, it reminded me of a theatre stage, though more Punch and Judy than Old Vic. My wife, outside, however, added a hint of that other Thai art, shadow puppetry, though the sun from the side made her outline more than a little contorted.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On