Scotland’s weather: Met Office ‘too slow’ to warn public of dangers

FORECASTERS at the Met Office have been forced to defend themselves against criticism they failed to properly warn the public about the severity of the weather which battered Scotland for much of yesterday.

The Met Office had issued a red warning for high winds, but not until after 8am yesterday morning, leading to accusations it had acted too late.

There was also blame levelled at the Scottish Government, which was criticised for “looking in the other direction” as winds of more than 100mph lashed parts of the country, causing widespread damage and travel disruption.

First Minister Alex Salmond chaired two meetings of the Scottish Government’s Resilience Committee (SGoRR) yesterday alongside transport minister Keith Brown.

However, it was suggested that ministers had been wrong-footed by the Met Office’s decision to upgrade its amber warning to red at 8:14am after it became clear that wind speeds in some parts of Scotland were higher than expected.

Elaine Murray, Labour’s housing and transport spokeswoman, said the Met Office had reacted too slowly and needed to do more to educate the public about the severity of its warnings.

She said: “The Met Office does not seem to have predicted what was happening. It seems to have been a bit slow, and did not put out anything until 8am when lots of people were already setting off for work. This time the weather seems to have taken a lot of people by surprise.

“You can’t legislate for it, but it just seems we were unprepared. People need to understand what the warning system means. There’s an education issue there about what people should be doing and whether they should be attempting to get into work.”

She also claimed Traffic Scotland, the travel website maintained by Transport Scotland, had failed to keep up to date with road closures, displaying inaccurate information.

Tory transport spokesman Alex Johnstone said the Scottish Government had failed to be as prepared as it was for storms which hit the country at the start of December. He said: “We saw an extreme effort put into warning people last month, that contrasts quite dramatically with this time around where the government have been caught looking in the other direction.

“The Met Office has been up to speed and I would congratulate them on their efforts, but the government have been made to look a bit silly, given the level of noise they made a month ago.”

But despite a number of accidents involving high-sided vehicles, Phil Flanders, a spokesman for the Road Haulage Association, said it was wrong to blame the Scottish Government.

He said: “They can only act on the information they get. There had been forecasts for high winds, but I don’t think anybody expected the winds to be the way they were.

“Not all high-sided vehicles are a risk. If they have a heavy load on they won’t blow over. Most lorry drivers are very good at what they do and will take every precaution they can.”

Following a meeting of the resilience committee yesterday, Mr Brown said there had been “significant activity” across the country to deal with winds, which included gusts of 102mph at Blackford Hill in Edinburgh, 97mph on Islay and 91mph at Bishopton in Renfrewshire.

He said that despite criticism, contingency arrangements had been put in place on Monday.

He said: “Thanks to the resilience arrangements that were put in place on Monday, engineers and chainsaw gangs – including many additional staff brought in from other areas – have been out all day restoring power lines, repairing faults and clearing trees from railway lines, roads and power lines.

“Both the Scottish Government Resilience Room and the Multi-Agency Response Team (MART) were operating before the Met Office red warning. The First Minister chaired two SGoRR meetings to continue to address the situation.”

A spokesman for the Met Office said there had been a number of warnings issued in the run-up to yesterday’s storm.

He said: “The Met Office put out a yellow warning for the risk of strong winds on Tuesday over the weekend, and then on Monday morning we issued an amber warning for strong winds for the central belt of Scotland. This highlighted that ‘gusts will reach 70 to 80mph, perhaps locally 90mph’ through central Scotland on Tuesday morning.

“As the Met Office collated further information early yesterday, the warning was upgraded to a red in order to pinpoint the areas most at risk from the strongest winds with gusts of between 85mph and 95 mph.”

Meanwhile, weather experts said last month saw the strongest westerly winds to batter the UK since December 1974. It also brought more westerly winds than any other December in 139 years of records except for one, according to weather historian Philip Eden.

Weather forecasters said this winter had been far stormier than recent winters, with two deep Atlantic depressions – or deep storms – in December and one today.

THE FORECAST

The weather outlook for the rest of the week remains unsettled. The Met Office has issued a yellow warning for the west of Scotland, with up to two-and-a-half inches of rain expected in some parts.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has issued a number of flood warnings, while the winds are not expected to begin dying down until Friday.

TODAY

The Met Office expects more rain, which would be heaviest in the west. A spokesman said: “For the west, it looks pretty wet throughout the whole day and that will spread to the east by evening. We’re issuing a weather warning for rainfall for western Scotland. On higher ground, we could see 40mm to 60mm of rain – that could lead to localised flooding. It will also be pretty windy, even though the winds dropped off slowly through yesterday. They will start to build up again, but will not be as strong as Tuesday.”

TOMORROW

The Met Office expects to see a slight improvement before turning wet. The spokesman added: “Thursday will bring a bit of respite with drier weather, but there will still be gusts of between 30mph to 40mph in the west.”

FRIDAY

“The winds will start to tail of, but it will still be gusty and a bit murky,” he added.