The weather forecast for last Monday’s Bank Holiday was a blunder. The Met Office said it would be wet along the South Coast, but instead it was glorious. According to Bournemouth Council’s tourist officer, Mark Smith, so many visitors were put off by the forecast that local businesses lost £1 million. He asked for a more localised forecast for seaside resorts to take their local weather patterns into account.
It is not the first time that weather conditions in and around Bournemouth have surprised. A violent thunderstorm in 1891 people were astonished when hundreds of small yellow frogs showered down from in torrents of rain. And on June 5, 1983, another tremendous thunderstorm dropped big lumps of black ice, some 8cm (3in) across, over Bournemouth,