IMHO, I just have to put my 2 cents on this... just bear with me...
I felt that we have to look at this on another perspective. We have enjoyed passive weather updates and blessed with nice tropical weather for as long as I can remember even up till National Service in SAF whilst checking for CAT status (updates were like every 2hrs or so?). For example look at the current website of our official weather portal:
http://www.weather.gov.sg/wip/web/home/further_outlook and compare to my usual favourite weather website:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/48698.html and
http://www.weathercity.com/sg/singapore/ which I get my weather fixes of local and some other countries in case I have to go there for assignments. Hey, some of these external sites even have weather satellites pics of up to 24hrs. Take for example the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland and this website giving instant hour-by-hour RSS feeds, charts, aviation advisories (
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/vaac/features.html) so that we can plan our travel itinerary better.
Probably the only updated info is the haze situation. I guess the passiveness of our weather agencies and it's current mode of "engaging" and disseminating information is just not what we expect it to be. Indeed we are a small island nation surrounded by land masses which have provided natural shelter to adverse severe weather changes up till now. However, everyone knows how climate change can affect even the smallest species.
Hence, I do empathize with fellow forum contributors here on the tempo of information as being "passive". I suppose it will be some time that our "weatherman" gets upgraded via SDF to "climatologists" and embrace public feedback and be able to engage the public confidently on providing useful climate info?
Anyway, anyone has any idea how come it does not rain during the festivities on almost on every SG National Day as far as I can remember -- although there were always some showers before the show starts or super light rain during; but not raining cats and dogs kinda thing - other than the black-and-white TV show of that heavy downpour of National Day celebrations way back then in 1960s. Maybe the weatherman is doing something right about this after all ;-) ? kudos to them on that if so. I'll overlook the lousy local weather station website for this.