Forecasters Feeling Some Official Heat

Moscow's Mayor Directs Displeasure at Weather Bureau, Proposes Fines for Inaccuracy

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 1, 2005; Page A10

MOSCOW, Feb. 28

Weathermen of the world, beware!

The mayor of this city, where -- stop the presses -- it tends to snow a lot, is furious that weather forecasts are sometimes inaccurate. And he has proposed fining the weather service every time it gets a forecast wrong.

"We are paying and would like to receive a quality product," Mayor Yuri Luzhkov thundered at a city government meeting last week that was attended by a number of forecasters. "Instead of that you are giving us [expletive]!"

The mayor's hot flash was prompted not by a failure to predict snow, but by the Moscow Weather Bureau's inability in January to say exactly when a blizzard would arrive and how much snow it would dump on the city. On Jan. 28, the city endured its heaviest snowfall since record-keeping began in the 19th century, and local public services were unable to cope.

The storm snarled the city's already horrendous traffic, closed airports and forced pedestrians to wade through high drifts.

"I think it's very funny he gets so upset, because we all know it snows in Moscow," said Larisa Stemkovskaya, 61, a retired engineer. "But the mayor is obsessed with weather."

Officials at the weather service, which is funded by the city, reacted coolly.

"Meteorology is a science, but meteorologists never claim a 100 percent accurate forecast," Alexei Lyakhov, head of the weather bureau, said in an interview. "Punishing weather forecasters is not happening anywhere else in the world, but maybe we should think about it. It's worth considering this idea of fining us if we also get bonuses when we get it right. And we get it right 90 to 99 percent of the time."

The mayor, however, wants perfection and has shown himself to be something of a control freak when it comes to the weather.

He created the capital's weather service in 1999 after the federal agency failed to forecast a thunderstorm that knocked down trees across the city. The following year he threatened to fire forecasters when they flunked in predicting the severity of a snowstorm. He famously accused the federal weather service of "telling lies."

On occasion, he directs the weather himself.

In advance of major holidays, sports events and parades, Luzhkov forks out tens of thousands of dollars for planes to seed clouds with dry ice and liquid nitrogen. That causes them to unleash their loads of moisture before reaching Moscow, often bringing torrential downpours to the hapless suburbs while the city basks in sunshine.