Stormy Friday the forecasters missed

This was the scene yesterday as I cycled home from work. This is ul. Puławska in Pyry, some 3km from ul. Trombity. From the time I left the office, I could tell that a huge weather system was bearing down on us. Could I outrun it? Not this time. Less than a minute before this photo was taken, the heavens opened, hailstones cascaded down, drenching all in their path. For the next six hours, thunder and lightning played across Warsaw, accompanied by heavy rain.

But how did the weather forecasters see the evening of Friday, 11 July? By 'weather forecasters' I'm not talking about what we get in the media, with all the generic accuracy of a tabloid horoscope, but from academic institutes which use sophisticated computer models to plot weather systems crossing our continent. I've tended to use www.new.meteo.pl to tell me what the cycling weather would be. But to get it this wrong? Below: the COAMPS model predicting rainfall for Poland for yesterday evening. Western Poland would have been expecting rain, central Poland, including Warsaw, would have been dry. Not a bit of it!

This time last year:
Summer attractions in Łazienki Park
Gloomy weather affected us last July too!