Met Office web site blows over

As I write this, the wind and rain are lashing against my windows, and the sky is black with menace.  A few hours ago I thought I would check with the Met Office website to see the prospects - and, guess what, it's blown away.  All you get is a message "The Met Office web site is currently experiencing a high level of demand from visitors to the site. We are sorry for any inconvenience, please try again."  It's been like that for several hours, now - a fat lot of use.  The BBC weather site seems to be about to collapse as well, to judge from how slowly it is responding, and the RAC Traffic News site and the AA equivalent have also given up the ghost.

Irritating - and the failure does expose a worry.  Near where I live, in East Anglia, one of the local councils has announced that they will be removing the flood warning sirens, and will ask people instead to rely on, amongst other things, the warning web sites.  But if a web site is too busy - such as it might be if a flood is imminent -  it falls over and becomes useless.

Bring back the sirens, is what I say.

Comments

[Dave Darwent]

Too right - we are too reliant, and being asked to become even more reliant, on ICT and it is NOT the answer to everything. Here in Sheffield if we had had flood warning sirens on June 25th, we may well have saved at least 2 lives and a great many homes could have been evacuated before they were inundated. No one ever thought Sheffield would flood so maybe there is an excuse for no sirens; but North East Norfolk?! It's ridiculous to take away the universal warning that everyone knows. (I used to stay in Cley a lot so I have a little experience, and know where the nearest siren is!)