Former BBC weatherman Bill Giles created a storm today after labelling the head of the Environment Agency “ignorant” over his “new type of rain” claims.
Bill, 73, says Lord Chris Smith doesn’t understand “basic” weather science and should “get a meteorologist” to check his facts.
The veteran forecaster has attacked the chairman of the Environment Agency after he blamed a “new” form of “convective” precipitation for the growing threat of flooding.
But Bill, who now lives in Dittisham, Devon, said: “There is nothing new about the rain.
“Perhaps next time Lord Chris Smith should get a meteorologist to check his answers so that he doesn’t appear so ignorant of simple straightforward facts.
“I agree that we must be prepared for flooding, not because there is a new type of rain, but because of the warming of the atmosphere which makes the old type of rain more intense.”
Giles, head of weather presenter at the BBC for 17 years, added: “How on Earth could we have appointed as chairman of the Environment Agency someone who so obviously doesn’t understand basic meteorology?”
Lord Smith, a Cambridge graduate, was trying to explain the growing risk of flooding when blaming the “new rain”.
He explained: “Instead of rain sweeping in a curtain across the country we are getting convective rain which sits in one place and just dumps itself into a deluge over a long period of time.”
