Hi David,
Did you serve at any RAF bases abroad? We had Met Office staff at Malta, Masirah and Gan when I served there, probably in Singapore too but I was at Seletar after the aircraft had moved to Tengah and Changi.
I remember at Gan (Maldives) we had Bert Ford, he of TV fame. I came off night shift from the commcen and thought I'd go for a single handed sail in the lagoon before having a sleep. Rang the met office and Bert looked at his radar and said it looks like about 10kt and calm.
Walked out of the sailing club and noticed the horizon was BLACK from East to West. Called Bert back and told him to forget the radar, look out of the window.
About half an hour later we had the most horrendous storm experienced in the 7 months I spent on the island!! He said it was because the storm was so huge it didn't show up on the radar as an entity, just blocked the whole thing out I guess.
Of course, it has to be said that they were 99.9% of the time totally reliable.
If you get in touch with Craig Bulman you will be very impressed, and a lovely man. I thought I had his email address but can't find it now.
Good luck
Dave Rose