The Meteorological Office and Extreme Weather in Post-War Britain
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Risk, Blame, and Expertise: The Meteorological Office and extreme weather in post-war Britain A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Life Sciences 2012 Alexander Hall Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................................. 2 List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... 7 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 8 Declaration .............................................................................................................................................. 9 Copyright Statement ............................................................................................................................. 10 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 12 1.1 Blame the experts: The Great Storm of 1987 ........................................................ 14 1.2 Histories of Twentieth Century Meteorology ........................................................ 19 1.3 Risk and Blame: A Conceptual Framework ............................................................ 22 1.3.1 Risk and Blame in the Mass Media ................................................................ 37 1.3.2 Risk and Meteorological Expertise ................................................................. 42 1.4 Chapter Overview .................................................................................................. 46 Chapter Two: Blame in a Post-war setting: the winter and fuel crisis of 1947 .................................. 50 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 50 2.2 The Fuel Crisis of the winter of 1947 ..................................................................... 52 2.3 The coldest winter since 1894 ............................................................................... 63 2.4 Seeking Someone to Blame ................................................................................... 73 2.5 Creating a cultural memory of the winter ............................................................. 81 2.6 The Absent Weather Forecaster ............................................................................ 84 2.7 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 87 Chapter Three: The Ad-hoc Expert: The role of the Meteorological Office in the extremes of war and peace .................................................................................................................................. 91 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 91 3.2 Meteorological Office operations under wartime pressure, 1939-1945 ............... 93 3.2.1 The Meteorological Office and the Control of Fuel Order, 1942-43 .............. 99 3.3 The post-war Meteorological Office .................................................................... 103 3.3.1 Absent Experts: The winter of 1947 ............................................................. 109 3.3.2 Inter-departmental Communication ............................................................ 113 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 120 Chapter Four: Expert advice in extreme weather events: The Meteorological Office and the Waverley Committee, 1953-1954................................................................................................ 124 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 124 2 4.2 The North Sea Flood, January 31st – February 1st, 1953 ...................................... 126 4.2.1 Committees in Disaster Events .................................................................... 132 4.3 Plugging the Gaps: The Emergency Coastal Warning System .............................. 136 4.4 The Departmental Committee on Coastal Flooding ............................................ 140 4.4.1 The Interim Report: Flood Warning System, July 1953 ............................... 148 4.4.2 From Interim Report to an operational warning system ............................. 150 4.4.3 The Report of the Departmental Committee on Coastal Flooding, May 1954 .. ...................................................................................................................... 156 4.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 164 Chapter Five: Framing the Sky: The (re)birth of weather forecasting on British television, 1954 ................................................................................................................................................ 167 5.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 167 5.2 Developing a new direction ................................................................................. 170 5.3 This was Airmet .................................................................................................... 175 5.4 Weather forecasts on British television ............................................................... 177 5.4.1 Meteorology gets a face: The launch of meteorologist-presented TV forecasts ...................................................................................................................... 182 5.4.2 Public response and expectations of early televised weather forecasts ..... 185 5.4.3 The meteorologist as television personality ................................................ 189 5.4.4 Framing the sky – the visual aspect of communicating the weather .......... 195 5.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 200 Chapter Six: To Serve and Protect: The creation of a public orientated national meteorological service, 1955-1963 .................................................................................................... 203 6.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 203 6.2 The Committee to Review the Organisation of the Meteorological Office, 1955-56 ............................................................................................................................. 207 6.3 Re-structuring to serve the civilian ...................................................................... 210 6.4 The creation of Regional Weather Centres and a centralised headquarters, 1959- 1961 ............................................................................................................................. 214 6.5 The development of extreme weather warning systems at the MO, 1954-1963 228 6.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 241 Chapter Seven: Corporate Experts in Adversity: The winter of 1962-63 and the Meteorological Office’s role .............................................................................................................. 244 7.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 244 7.2 Helping the nation through: The Meteorological Office and the winter of 1962-63 ............................................................................................................................. 246 3 7.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 264 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 267 Framing Disasters ............................................................................................................. 268 Experts in Risk Management and Communication .......................................................... 269 Broader Risk Narratives and Future Study ....................................................................... 273 Bibliography........................................................................................................................................ 267 Archival Sources ............................................................................................................... 279 Secondary References ...................................................................................................... 282 Appendix I ........................................................................................................................................... 296 Appendix II .......................................................................................................................................... 302 [Word Count – 81,531] 4 List of Figures Chapter One