Met office v BBC weather

So Met Office says dry at Coed y Brenin tomorrow, BBC says 90% chance of rain.

Noticed that these apps differ quite a bit in their forecast prediction.

Which app would you delete off your phone?

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Met website forecasts for my location are mostly accurate.

Delete BBC app

I use metcheck as they tend to be a bit more optimistic.

Invariably it’s not as rainy as the forecasters predict. Even if it is, getting wet is not nearly as bad as sitting indoors looking out at clear blue skies.

Met office Mountain forecast for Snowdonia should be there abouts.

Metro Group took over the BBC weather franchise ~2 years ago iirc and their forecast has consequently been dire.

Metcheck seems to almost always think it’s going to rain around here, I gave up on it ~2 years ago, when it had been reasonably good for the previous ~3 years.

I use Met Office and Weather Underground.

Met has recently had a weird trend where it forecasts rain for day X for days beforehand, but night before or morning of day X they decide it will be dry, only for it to start raining at original forecast time!

personally find Accuweather best – and their Minutecast is very good for rain (for me at least)

personally find Accuweather best

This and as above I too find the BBC pessimistic

what do yr.no say?

BBC always seems to be on the pessimistic side when it comes to rain. I’ve always found the google weather search with the little sliding bar pretty accurate for timing of rain. It will rain a bit, you will be fine.

Try this one windy,com

You can show and hide different layers, depending on what yo are interested in.

You can even choose different modelling systems to see how that changes the forecast.

just deen dabbling, I like the BBC widget, but it seems to be less stable recently.

Now downloaded accuweather and using that widget – I like the ‘real feel’ temperature mode, so here it’s allegedly 8c, but its freezing with the wind and rain, and the real feel mode is saying -3c which is more realistic.

+1 for accuweather,checking their minutecast and radar just before a ride is pretty accurate here in S.Yorks.

I like ventusky.

Dark sky.

In a different league. Rain forecast is amazing.

Small fee.

BBC weather forecasting has seemingly been generated at random for the last year or so. Met office is generally OK, especially if you can track it for a few days and look at the map as well as the cloud/rain/sun icons.

There’s rain forecast just North / West of C-Y-B on Saturday, so whether you stay dry or not depends on just where the edge of this rain ends up. Looks like it would be showery, rather than biblical if it does catch you.

I’ve seen the Dark Sky app, and it was fantastic at showing this sort of thing and for short range (next few hours) rain forecast.

In Cumbria here and I always find the Met office is a lot better than the BBC as said above especially if you use the map.

If I remember correctly the
Met office is strategically funded as a national requirement
David Cameron forced the BBC to make savings so they bought in a cheaper service
Essentially we now pay for two weather systems

Some or all of the above may be absolutely wrong but it is a Good story 😊

I think MeteoGroup primarily use ECMWF model data.

That’s OK tho, cos the ECMWF super-duper-puter is based in Reading, so those hi-tech jobs remain in the UK.

Oh look.

Apparently not.

In 2017 it was decide to move it to Italy.

Why, just why, might that have occurred? Eh?

I found be the most accurate weather forecast is looking out the window.

Depends if your glass is half full or half empty.

But if you leave it outside, it might get topped up.

I found be the most accurate weather forecast is looking out the window

That’s not a forecast. It’s a nowcast.

BBC is usually pretty good for Pembrokeshire but I tend to use windfinder to give an idea of what’s coming our way over the next 48-72 hours.

Just noticed that the met office has now updated for showers at CYB tomorrow, so looks like “BBC 1 – 0 Met Office”, at the moment!

We use meteogroup at work (water company) and as a rule we have found it much better than the met office. No forecast is perfect so taking a range of values and making a decision would seem sensible

No love for YR.no?

Always found that to be excellent. Except for wind, when I use windy.com or XCWeather.co.uk

so looks like “BBC 1 – 0 Met Office”, at the moment!

surely depends if it rains or not

+1 for Dark Sky. I cruelly fool my parents that it is about to rain in 18 minutes and they cannot fathom how I know.

Met office.

yr.no is very good too.

Another dark sky user here, its the “ronseal” of weather apps and very accurate.

Netweather live radar

Yr.no
Mwis.org
Ventusky
Rainalarm

Depending on what I’m doing, if going to any great height, it’s mwis.

No love for YR.no?

Always found that to be excellent. Except for wind

I’m not a fan of it for mountain forecasts, the wind speeds and temps are usually inaccurate. I think it’s a function of the models they use as the inaccuracies are pretty constant. Maybe it works ok for rain prediction or at lower altitudes?

yr.no

Ventusky

Both are excellent – and got yesterday’s deluge spot on:

Weather Underground for right here, right now  (i recorded 28mm of rain yesterday!)

Aye, I agree spin, for local weather it’s fine.

Windy Wilson on Facebook, an amateur forecaster, patter merchant and all round good guy is about as good as any on them!

Before going on any lengthy ride, I check 3 different weather forecasts and always pick the one that offers the best weather.

It’s better to be out on the bike disappointed about the weather than sitting inside wishing you had gone out. 🙂

Dark sky.

In a different league. Rain forecast is amazing.

Small fee.

Free on the website (perhaps paying would mean it remembers the things I care about – wind and rain, deg C etc?). I like it. I also like yr.no . If I really want to understand though I go for Grib files and see the detail…

If two different weather models are giving wildly different predictions either its just an indicator that the condition are too uncertain to be sure either way or you are potentially unwittingly not comparing apple with apples. e.g. is the actual location identical? are you comparing the same time period (if it will rain at 02:30-03:30 then BBC are right, but if its dry from 03:30 to 23:59 are Met Office wrong?), what do they define as “rain” – I think most meteorologists would say that even a few spits of rain for a few minutes is precipitation and therefore ticks the “it rained” box, but even if you were out all day you might not regard it as having rained – do they all use the same threshold?

To me the question is not will it rain, you are going outdoors in Wales in February I don’t need a supercomputer to tell you that you should probably go prepared for that possibility. The questions might be – how heavily will it rain? is there window in the day when it is likely to be better/worse? I think you can tell a lot more from a map too – if you see a solid band of rain coming across the whole of England and Wales – you can be pretty sure its going to rain, and the question is just when and how hard. If you see its very patchy you know it will be harder to predict, and if you see the tail end of weather is just hitting (or missing) the area you can expect possibility of error in the length/direction of the weather. Obviously the closer to the time the easier to predict. Its useful therefore to be able to see when the model was last updated, but for longer term planning I find its useful to see how consistent each model was with the last – if models every 4 hrs for the last 48 hrs have said it will rain on Sunday, there’s a good chance Sunday will be wet. if it keeps changing its mind – then I think you can infer anything its too soon to be sure.

Windy Wilson

His patter’s shite.

#ooyahoorsir #easynow 🤙

I’ve ran with him a couple of times, he’s a funny wee guy, without trying to be. 😁

I think most meteorologists would say that even a few spits of rain for a few minutes is precipitation and therefore ticks the “it rained” box, but even if you were out all day you might not regard it as having rained – do they all use the same threshold?

You can see the level of rain coming via a chart and satellite over x time period. You can also see how the wind is blowing that weather front.

You can set the level at which you are forwarned before it comes.

Also, the fee is for the App.

You also can have a daily summery too via notification. I really like this feature.

Have a look at the FlowX app for map-based rain prediction.

A friend showed me it, and it kind-of fills the gap left behind by the late, lamented BBC Rainwatch app.

I still use BBC most of the time personally though, it’s generally accurate here.