Don Baccus wrote:

> Hey, ya 'ole keyboard hound, lose your <cr> or <nl> key? :)

Whoops - looks like my left hand doesn't know what the right hand is up to :-)

> My understanding is that weather forecasting in the UK is in the
> same range of difficulty as that in Oregon, for similar reasons
> (nearby ocean, lots of variability in the pace of fronts and
> when and where they make landfall).

As it always rains in Scotland they don't have much of a problem with this -
It's the dry bits they have a hard time in predicting :-)

> Is he sane?

He's kind of ill at the moment and will be off work for quite some time.
Needless to say he's glad to be out of the office, so in answer to your
question - he is now.

The UK is having the same problems in trying to make the weather service
become a profitable organisation. It's still the same government agency but
all the managers wear sharp suits and carry filofaxes and cell-phones. Being
business-like and being in business are not the same - as they are finding out
to their dismay as all the good people leave.

I really miss the BBC weather reports - lots of pressure maps so I can still
make a valued judgement as to the likely accuracy of the forecast from the
Meteorological Office. The high-tech, information free crap that is pushed on
TV over here is a real pain to watch - never even close to being accurate and
a complete waste of time. Bring on the internet - at least that's free - for
the moment. I suppose if all else fails I can get Washington weather reports
from my brother in Aberdeen, Scotland. When we were up in Norway in the
summer, I phoned him to let him know about the birds we were getting - "It's
been pouring down for the last 2 days !", "Yes, I know, came the reply". He'd
been sitting looking at the reports from one of the automatic stations near
the study area and having a good laugh.

> OK, back to topic - there have been radar studies done in the Gulf
> of Mexico mapping raptor migration. Maybe songbirds, too. Done
> in cooperation with the military due to an insider who has a strong
> interest in bird migration, as I recall. I'm certain the people
> looking at the data have correlated them with weather information,
> though not the weather prediction models I'd guess.

I would have thought this would be an obvious thing to do it would be
possible to get all the data required - speed, direction, height and then map
it onto windflow charts to look at the energetics of migration. I suspect the
only problem would be identifying species since shorebirds are roughly the
same size - well compared to a 747they are :-) and so it would only answer
general questions. Also perhaps it's sexier to play with supercomputers than
staring at a radar screen for days :-)

See ya,

Stuart