Sir, Paul Simons (Weather Eye, Jan 4) misrepresents WeatherAction’s long-range January forecasts. We expected some exceptionally cold weather later in the month, not an “apocalyptic freeze” in the first week, as he claims. We said the first week “will turn colder” — which it did.

In the end the weather is our judge. On November 1 on this page I warned of two major storms to come “around Nov 8-13” and “around Nov 24-28”. They both occurred. The North Sea storm surge of November 9 entailed evacuations of 2,000 from the Yarmouth coast, unprecedented sea defence measures in Holland and notable winds in Scotland. The latter in which we had explicitly forecast “extremely stormy sea conditions and alarming build-up of swell” from 11 months ahead was confirmed on December 1 by the largest sea swell on record on Western coasts, as well as damaging winds in Britain, the Channel, France and Belgium. Paul Simons denies these successes.

Of the 16 significant flood or rain/storm events WeatherAction forecast for Britain since June, all occurred in some sense — or 14 out of 16 under more stringent measures. The Met Office’s summer forecasts were pretty well the opposite of our flood forecasts. It seems proponents of “global warming” are so desperate to claim weather extremes as “theirs” that they cannot countenance our 85 per cent reliable predictions through solar-based methods.

Piers Corbyn
WeatherAction, long range forecasters

Explore Letters

• Feedback