The faulty weather forecast meant the event to celebrate St Stephen’s Day – the national holiday – was postponed just seven hours before it was scheduled to take place. But the predicted extreme rain never arrived, prompting the sacking of weather service chief Kornelia Radics and her deputy Gyula Horvath. Up to two million people were expected to watch the display, where some 40,000 fireworks were to be launched from 240 points along three miles of the Danube River in the capital Budapest. The event was postponed by a week, but in the event the rainstorm predicted by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) missed the city entirely, hitting parts of eastern Hungary instead. A public apology was posted by the service on its Facebook page on Sunday, which said the “least likely” outcome had occurred. The NMS cited “a factor of uncertainty inherent in the profession.” The organization faced backlash from pro-government media on Sunday. Origo, an online newspaper, accused them of giving “misleading information about the extent of the bad weather, which misled the operational team responsible for safety”. But others were much more lenient. “They couldn’t create the desired weather, they got fired. No, it’s not a dictatorship in Central Asia, it’s Hungary [ruling party] Fidesz,” liberal Andras Fekete-Gyor wrote on Facebook. Reaction to the planned screening was already mixed, with a petition calling for its cancellation due to the war in Ukraine and Hungary’s struggling economy receiving over 200,000 signatures.
