UKC

Have not seen the papers yet today, but acording to radio 4 a large number of national papers are today running articals saying the next month weather will be atrocious with tons of snow and realy cold long periods of sub minus temps. I know that they need to sell papers and this is one way of filling up pages while grabing the publics atention but why should we believe them. Am off to hScotland myself in Feb and hope there predictions are not far off the mark but going by some of thier former headlines im not holding my breath. Given that it is very hard to give a acurate forcast for the next 5 days how can they think we will believe one that predicts 1 month in advance.

In reply to Russell Lovett:

The daily Express has 'siberian icy death blast' on permanent rotation with illegal immigrants, benefits cheats, princess Di and Madeleine mccann on their front page

Or it.did have, until levenson. Since it can't use the last two now, that means the arctic weather headline gets used even more. I suspect they may even have to start using it in July, I'd levensons recommendations are implemented in full...

In reply to Russell Lovett:

Paul Hudson (BBC Yorkshire regional meteorologist) has some interesting insights on the Express hype:

http://tinyurl.com/bzlc56a

Key phrase:

'When I worked at the Met Office some years ago, I remember the press office contacted a tabloid newspaper to ask why they continued to print such weather stories which invariably turned out to be wrong.

Their answer was very honest, straightforward and unapologetic.

Weather sells newspapers they said; admitting that each and every time they had a front page story on extreme weather, their circulation went up by around 10%.'