Most of those who forecast for Heathrow have many years experience of forecasting for that location and have built up detailed local knowledge of the region. Plus, some were based at Heathrow when forecasts were produced from there.
The TAF, after all, is the forecast written by the Airfield's forecaster, any conversations will reflect this. The forecasters have access to considerably more (forecasting) data compared to that available to the observing staff.
What is of concern, is that additional onsite information that the observer passes to the forecaster verbally, particularly for Trend purposes, will be lost.
Clearly things have changed but the fact is that Heathrow forecasts (and many other airfields) are considerably more accurate than they were say 10 years ago. (Met Office/CAA verification stats).
Furthermore, with increasingly higher resolution models, improved automatic observing systems and more frequent synoptic data (e.g. 10min SYNOPs) the picture isn\'t as bleak as some would paint it.
Last edited by FCUK12; 22nd November 2004 at 19:05.