Masterclass
Forecasts
I’m ashamed to say I’m an addict. A weather forecast junkie. I’m obsessive, spending hours clicking from one forecast to another on the telly or the computer. I heave great sighs, exasperated by the inevitable inconsistencies, obviously aimed just to make the life of Val Corbett, photographer, particularly difficult. (“How” – I go in to outraged drama queen mode “can this one say it’s going to be ‘wet and windy’ and that one say ‘dry and calm’. WHAT am I meant to do? WHERE am I meant to go?”) My children now tell me they warned visiting friends never, ever to be near Mum when she was checking forecasts. But now I’ve turned in to a flirt. After years of outrage, I now understand that the very essence of a forecast is to be different from the rest. Why otherwise have so many? These days I flirt outrageously with my current favourite, and plan my days out with it, until it too lets me down once too often, and I move onto a new favourite. So it was that a long term online favourite, ‘Metcheck’ got dumped – an entertaining read but that was about it. And as for another long term steady, ‘Accuweather’ – in the end I concluded it was anything but. However I remain faithful to the BBC television forecasts. Oddly, the BBC web forecast often doesn’t match the live stuff on telly, and is less reliable. I especially rely on breakfast telly ones, although by that time I might as well go out and use my eyes. The half hourly regional forecast would be really useful if the presenter didn’t stand in front of Cumbria. And yes, I have phoned to complain. Many times.
And so it came to be that on New Year’s Eve I fell for a new favourite forecast, MWIS – grandly called the Mountain Weather Information Service. I’d had a soft spot for it for some time – it bothers with that essential fact, that different areas of the Lake District have different weather. It also provides a pressure chart, sadly missing from most forecasts. That morning I woke to the stygian gloom that had been predicted, and did my normal forecast checks. All were in agreement, an intensely cold, very cloudy day. With one exception, MWIS, which had an altogether more interesting prediction, for inversion, and described with such precision, that if I drove to the top of Kirstone Pass, I would be walking above the clouds in warm sunshine soon after. And so it was – although the deep gloom only increased as I drove up the Pass, and the car thermometer read –5C as I parked, I was soon climbing Red Screes and enjoying my most spectacular walk and photo session in the Lakes of 2008, on the very last day.
So my advice this month, my opinion being that great landscape photos are largely about being in the right place at the right time, is to get that forecast habit.
Looking west, from Red Screes with Harter Fell in the far distance, glimpsed through Wrynose Pass, the summit of which is just emerging through the cloud. I waited as long as I dared, (given that I still had to descend a steep and icy path, had forgotten a torch and was on my own) to try to catch the evening light. Taken with my Nikon D200, set at ISO 125, f 16, using my 105mm lens. As I hadn’t taken a tripod, I rested the camera on a rock.
Looking down onto Kirkstone Pass on the descent from Red Screes, with the cloud temporarily lower than the Inn, As darkness increased, the lights were a useful guide – until the last 10 minutes when the cloud rose again, enveloping me and leaving me struggling to find the way. Taken with my Nikon D200 propped on a rock, with the ISO set to 200, and the aperture at f 8.
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