The Weather Thread

BBC said NASA, but either way it makes the point.

and on the topic of Thom....... I also would.

Well, they kind of both do, as surely it all depends on *where* in space you're viewing the UK from as to how Britain appears. It just depends on the perspective.

But in that sense, saying that the BBC weather maps show how Britain appears from space is on their part, a meaningless justification. They just happen to favour a southerly, low orbit.

Duh! (In the nicest possible way, Spence )

Their implication being that its the *only* way to view Britain.



I think it works quite well for New Zealand - as their fly through runs SW to NE. Ours is S to N.

It sucks.

If it wasn't for Thom I wouldn't bother watching it at all.

Well duh back (again in a very nice way) - that's not what you said. You were saying that the BBC's view is not how Britain appears from space, and that the NASA view is.

I'm just saying they're both as feasible.

And so their justification of their choice of angle on such grounds is meaningless... which is what I think you're saying now.

It was taken by NASA's MODIS satellite: http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/ However the University of Dundee are involved: http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/modis-faq.html

Where did they imply this?


The fly through used here is circular around the coast - down the east coast from Scotland around the south east and along to cornwall, up through wales to NI

Once I saw them do a wierd flyover of the south coast from east to west but rotated 90 degrees so that west was at the top of the screen. Didn't work at all

When I see the old style weather maps these days it amazes me that we put up with something so vague - one cloud for the whole of London!?

If a new company takes over they'll need weather forecasters so they'd probably mostly get made redundant and have to apply for jobs with the successor

I may have mis-spoken, but that's exactly what I meant.



That's how they explained it away after a slew of complaints to POV - and I did actually meet someone at IBC involved in the software procurement who said much the same thing.

Gorgeous guy - rubbish excuse.

Yep - though now you have the fly-rounds you spend most of the time looking at the weather for areas you have no interest in. Previously you could look at "your bit" of the map all the time and see what was going on.

Personally I think we should have retained the symbols on some maps. The current "scorched earth" stuff is OK for telling some bits of the weather story - but very ambiguous for others. Fog and snow can look identical (the forecasters usually point this out...)

I think the symbols were less vague than some grey graduation if I'm honest - they may have been less localise, but they were clearer in what to expect. For the local weather you often end up with just a screen of grey with the current system.

I think the previous satellite pix for some sequences, radar pix for some sequences, symbols for some sequences worked well...

And PLEASE bring back more of the wind and isobar maps - they're useful to people who understand the weather... (And they don't put decent weather maps on the website any more either)

While I'm not an employment lawyer, I'd have thought that the employees would have to be TUPEd over.

In a previous job, our company took over transmission services for a group of channels from another provider. Because the roles of playout director, tx assistant, and librarian still existed, albeit with a new employer at a new location, people from the old company had the right to keep their job with the new company - though could opt for redundancy if they didn't like the new location or hours.

I'm not sure which union represents the Met Office's outpost in TVC, but I daresay they''re studying the fine print of any change of contract.

Yes, that would likely be what happens. Are Met Office staff civil servants? If so they'd be very keen to keep the benefits which that brings.

It'd probably not be the case as the Met Office isn't contracting the service out to a third party. As far as they are concerned the contract that they are working to would be ceasing. If the staff were BBC employees it would be different as the BBC are possibly doing the contract change. Remember ITV have said in the situation of any of their local news operations being transferred to the new Independent News providers that their local news staff would be made redundant as their particular job is ending.