BBC & Met Office Rainfall Data Misinformation Continues
When the BBC makes claims about record rainfall, I suggest you check your wallet!
So let’s ‘fact check’ the claims.
It was not a record January in N Ireland – it was wetter in 1877:
Yet the BBC claim this year had the highest rainfall.
Official statistics for January have been released by the Met Office and confirm what many will already suspect – it has been very wet for many areas.
Northern Ireland, south-west and southern England, and the east of Scotland all had one of their wettest Januarys on record.
With 70 percent more rain than average Northern Ireland experienced the wettest January for 149 years. Culdrose in Cornwall recorded two and a quarter times its average, while Aboyne in Aberdeenshire had nearly four times its January average of 68.9mm.
This is an outright lie.
In the small print, you will see “the wettest January for 149 years” – which most people will assume was the start of the record, but in reality, it means there was the same amount of rain in 1877.
Either way, the BBC’s headline is false – no records were broken in Northern Ireland.
Nor was it a record in East Scotland. Using the Met Office‘s own data, we see it was only the ninth wettest:
Source: metoffice.gov.uk
And across southern England, again using the Met Office’s own data, we see it was only the sixth wettest:
The BBC also fails to put any of these numbers in proper context. Instead they only want to spread “record rainfall” propaganda.
Rainfall in Northern Ireland totalled 195.6mm last month. Across all months, there have been a total of 24 months with more than 190mm there.
The wettest month came in October 1870, when 247.9mm fell.
In simple terms, this year saw the wettest month in Northern Ireland for six years – but that does not make scary headlines.
It was, of course, very wet in certain localities, as often happens when the jet stream gets stuck. It was the South West which came off worst last month, as people who live there have rightly commented.
The Somerset Levels have flooded, but it was not as wet in Yeovilton last month as it was in January 2014 – 147.2 v 166.4 mm.
Since the start of records there in 1964, there have been fifteen months with more than 140 mm of rain, with the wettest being 192.4mm in November 2002:
Source: metoffice.gov.uk
The Met Office are, frankly, piss poor at providing meteorological data to the public. They offer no historical daily data at all and only monthly data at a handful of sites, such as Yeovilton.
I gather there was 271 mm in Torbay. But even that pales into insignificance in comparison with some of the totals registered in November 1929. October 1960 was also extremely wet in Devon, with 311 mm falling in Exeter.
And the BBC & Met Office wonder why less and less people trust them now.
See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Bold emphasis added