When I worked at Strike Command at High Wycombe back in 1972 as an assistant for the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, we had a chart that we had to continually update that everyone knew as ‘The Grid’. The Grid was an A1 sized thick card, with a grid of all the airfields that Strike was responsible for (and there were many back then) down the left hand side, and along the top the hours 00-23 for that day. At the bottom there was an extra grid for any ‘specials’ if memory serves. So each hour it was someone’s job to keep The Grid up to date by plotting all the observations, and any specials that came along. The local forecasters did occasionally look at it, but I think it was as much there to give the assistants something to do, because there were a lot of assistants, and forecasters, down in that underground bunker, and doing the tea round there was no fun, I can tell you!
So this new addition to my SYNOPSYNOP SYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. application is a homage to The Grid. It plots 18 stations, north to south down across the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. for the latest 24 hours. When a cold or warm front went through the forecasters drew a diagonal coloured line across the chart to mark its passage. How times have changed