Severe weather warnings

[gingerdavid]

It amuses me that British weather forecasts from the Meteorological Office now include colour-coded severe weather warnings.

At the moment, for example, there is a yellow alert ("Moderate risk of some damage to infrastructure and local disruption") for Wales and the southwest of England on Friday with the following advisory message:
There is a

Comments

and now, the shipping forecast...

[bdouville]

Perhaps the whole discourse has changed since September 11, 2001 (or, if you will, the London subway bombings). Perhaps the language of colour-coded alerts has been transferred from "terror" to include "weather."

In Toronto, we're only weather wusses when it comes to snow. The rest of the country was either disgusted or greatly amused in 1999, when the city mayor declared an exceptional snowfall to be an emergency and called in the military for assistance. :)

Cheers,

Bruce

Re: and now, the shipping forecast...

[gingerdavid]

I suspect that the Met Office has simply fallen prey to the insidious CYA¹ culture.

They prefer to be able to say "well, we warned you that it was going to rain!" even if it makes them look silly.

I think that London can match Toronto when it comes to panic over a little bit of snow. The entire London transport network -- buses and underground trains -- was shut down earlier this year when a couple of inches of snow fell.

¹ Cover your ass

[tko_ak]

Leave it to the government to exaggerate and over complicate things. ;)

Weather apocalypse

[gingerdavid]

We're now at orange alert!