NOW that Easter is behind us and we are into May I think we can say that winter has definitely passed.

I say "winter" if one can call it that. I have been waiting to see if the 'experts' would be right. But no.

Last autumn, the weather experts predicted one of the worst winters on record and newspapers carried alarming reports.

I had visions of months of freezing temperatures and of being snowed in.

What happened? Once again we had a mild winter with just a few frosts. We had mentionable snow on three occasions and each time it did cause road chaos, although it was all but gone by lunchtime.

The only record broken was that less precipitation fell during January then ever recorded.

When I studied geography at Harrogate College during the 1980s, I discovered that because of ever-changing weather patterns it is impossible to accurately forecast the weather more than a few days in advance.

So just why do these so-called weather experts still keep giving us these inaccurate, and often alarmist, long-term weather forecasts that are of no use to anyone?

Dale Edwards,

Newborough Street,

Bootham,

York.

Updated: 09:50 Saturday, May 13, 2006