Although I live in Exeter 500m away from the Met office ( whom i believe supply the bbc data) the accuracy tbh is pretty atrocious and I just wondered if anyone has found a more reliable website for weather predictions?
thanks in advance
Bill

Hang a piece of string out of your window, if it’s wet when you bring it back in, it’s raining. if it moves about a bit when you hang it out it’s a bit windy.

I should charge for that

try

metcheck.com

i use it all the time and its accurate, servers off line at moment though

Or the met’s own website

look at the pressue charts and do your own forecast – pretty reliable if you know what you’re doing and pay attention.

The weather tomorrow will be like today’s.

I check metcheck and the bbc and assume the worse forecast will be right.

a window?

Google Yr.no

Yes, I know it’s a Norwegian forecast but it also covers the UK. Works for me.

D.

Why do people think that there must be an accurate way to forecast the weather in the UK for any particular town for anything more than the next few hours?
Is it a blind belief that science must have an answer?

It’s relatively easy when there’s a big front coming though or a big high pressure sat over us, but to current period of sporadic heavy bouts of rain is nigh on impossible to predict exactly where & when it might fall out of the sky.

Try predicting yourself whether or not you need your brolly today

http://www.raintoday.co.uk/

I stick to looking out the window and seeing what wind is like. Forecasts are never that accurate but paying attention to clouds and the wind will give you a rough idea of the weather for the day. If the cloud changes or the wind then you can also tell what’s coming.

this is a real favourite of sailors, spot on wind forecasts too, useful for riding
http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

try

metcheck.com

i use it all the time and its accurate, servers off line at moment though

What? MetGUESS? Don’t make me laff!

Why do people think that there must be an accurate way to forecast the weather in the UK for any particular town for anything more than the next few hours?
Is it a blind belief that science must have an answer?

It’s relatively easy when there’s a big front coming though or a big high pressure sat over us, but to current period of sporadic heavy bouts of rain is nigh on impossible to predict exactly where & when it might fall out of the sky.

No, it really isn’t anything like impossible.
What happens is this – Someone sees or hears a forecast, and latches onto a few words: ‘rain’, ‘sun’ etc. Then they expect the weather to be exactly like that for the whole day. Or they hear ‘showers’ and then when it rains more than once, or not at all “The forecast was crap!”

Now, I love weather. I like to look at the raw data from the Met Office and forcast it myself. I’m a weather geek, I’m always looking at it. 😳
And I have to say that 24/48 hr forecasts are, in the main, stunningly accurate these days. When they’re not I notice it. E.G: There was a forecast of rain one afternoon here in Farnborough, a front moving in from the west and then grinding to a halt above us and fizzling out slowly, IIRC. It didn’t rain at all. But, looking into it, the front DID come in from the west and grind to a halt, but it stopped about 20-30 miles before it reached us, and then fizzled out. Now, personally, I’d still say that was pretty accurate, but it’s just the sort of thing people moan about.

There’s 2 things I look at on the Met Office website

1) Most important, the RAINFALL RADAR
This is NOT a forecast. It is what is actually happening right NOW and for the last few hours in 1/2hr intervals. You can play the aninmation and watch it move and develop or fizzle out. I swear to god, you can tell when it’s going to start/stop raining from that nearly down to the minute!

2) The SURFACE PRESSURE CHARTS[/URL]
A bit more involved and you need to know a bit more about them to read them, but a forecast is given for the movement of highs, lows, fronts etc. All you really need to know is that a high pressure building over the UK in the summer usually means warm dry weather and lots of tightly packed isobars = windy!

I quite like http://netweather.tv as it’s enthusiastically geeky.

I’ve used weather online for some time. They’ve only had it disasterously wrong once in the last couple of years, for me.

Better than BBC forecasts? Complete guesswork would be a better alternative… Seems to work for me.

(If its any help, a few weeks ago when we went night riding at Dalby, according to the Met Office website, the rain was due to stop at 19:30 and as if someone turned off the tap, at 19:30 the rain stopped and we had an excellent nights riding!)

Ohh! Look at the +48hr map on the surface pressure charts! Looks nasty!

Then look at the progression of the strengthening wind speeds here

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_wind.html

as you go through the week…… 😀

But as wind generally blows from a high pressure to a low pressure, and there’s a big high to the south of us, we get a southerly wind, which is warmer, so the temperatures stay decent for the time of year, watch them rise as we go through the week here

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_temp.html

Taaa-Daaaaaaa! 😀

Better than BBC forecasts? Complete guesswork would be a better alternative… Seems to work for me.

(If its any help, a few weeks ago when we went night riding at Dalby, according to the Met Office website, the rain was due to stop at 19:30 and as if someone turned off the tap, at 19:30 the rain stopped and we had an excellent nights riding!)

BBC and Met Office are usually almost identical. Where do you think the BBC gets it’s data from? 😉

For an advance on the met office rainfall raday, take a look at
http://www.raintoday.co.uk/

bit more zoomed in so easier to see detail.
You can also pay to get the “15 minutes ago” image instead of the free 30 minutes one.

I use that, metoffice, and Metcheck (although seems less accurate now it;s really popular?) and pick the middle of them all.

pp+1, the rest of them all get their info from the met office anyway.

I use Windguru (same model as XCWeather), Met Office and theyr.tv and when I see all 3 agree I reckon there’s a fair chance of an accurate forecast. But if you’re looking for someone to tell you if that passing shower is gonna hit or miss you, in autumn in the UK…..dream on.

bbc data) the accuracy tbh is pretty atrocious

The Met Office (and BBC) is very accurate. You just need to understand what they are telling you.

Showers means a probability of rain. Think about it – there’s going to be random patches of rain over a particular region, you might get hit you might not. Likewise, if they say ‘rain overnight’ it means that some rain bearing weather is coming in your direction, with a likelihood of producing some rain in your actual garden’.

Best thing imo is to listen carefully to the TV forecaster – they use appropriate language which expresses these kind of probabilities. They also hardly ever talk about weather further away than tomorrow, and if they do it’s in vague terms like ‘it may get much colder towards the end of the week’. Because that’s all anyone CAN say.

If you’re looking for a page that says ‘it’ll definitely rain from 8.30 til 8.50 in your town’ then you won’t find it.

To be honest, the simplified view on the BBC website doesn’t help matters because it implies that they ARE claiming specifics. Especially the forecast rain maps.

Seriously, do some research on weather.

And PP talks great sense.

MWIS is great for Peaks/ Lakes/ Scotland

I agree with the bbc’s “over simplification” on the initial page . For example a monday may have the “heavy rain” image and name but if you look further at the map below you’ll often see that the heavy rain is only for a very short time in a small area and the rest of the day will be fine . Without scrutiny it is often rather misleading IMHO.

MWIS in the mountains.

metcheck is a joke…. they have been known to forecast 400mph winds and 500mbar atmospheric pressure. They also seem the first to claim it’s going to get to -15 when it’s only around 0. sensalionist weather for daily mail numpties…. 😉

….. and one of metguess’s founders is a kiddy fiddler – is he still in jail?

XCweather for me

This rain forecast from the BBC normally seems pretty accurate for the next 24 hours

clicky

You just need to check it regularly and think more about the patterns of the rain its showing rather than the exact times.

At the moment it shows a massive rain(snow in scotland) front coming in over Wednesday/Thursday night.

From my experience theres pretty much 100% chance it will rain at some time tonight/tomorrow morning from this prediction what more do you want ?

I have to say, as an Exeter resident myself I find the met offices Exeter page to be damn accurate.
Test:
1)look out the window – sunny as tits
2) Look here met office Exeter it says, and I quote, “Sunny as tits”

Happy days they know their stuff.

Go on try it.

meteox is also good for rainfall radar and predictions for the next 3hrs.

I thought from Plymouth to Exeter it was simple… North of the A38 it is always raining, South of the A38 it is always dry?

Ohh! Look at the +48hr map on the surface pressure charts! Looks nasty!

Then look at the progression of the strengthening wind speeds here

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_wind.html

as you go through the week……

But as wind generally blows from a high pressure to a low pressure, and there’s a big high to the south of us, we get a southerly wind, which is warmer, so the temperatures stay decent for the time of year, watch them rise as we go through the week here

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_temp.html

Taaa-Daaaaaaa!

Just a guess here but because the high is over the Atlantic does that mean that the winds will be bringing wet weather, whereas if the high was over france/spain we’d be staying dry?

“look at the pressue charts and do your own forecast – pretty reliable if you know what you’re doing and pay attention.”

The most stupid dumbing down thing the BBC ever did was taking pressure charts of the daily tv forecasts

Metcheck just use GFS ( Global Forcasting Sys- American) computer for their graphics. Best bet is to read the model discussions on theweatheroutlook and netweather to get a picture of medium to long term trends. They will also threads on upcoming weather points of interest ie the storm Thus/Fri

weather2 glentress

Loads of good suggestions here. And will people stop knocking weather forecasters? I’m stunned by how accurate the weather charts are, even down to timing of fronts which might still be three days away and not even formed yet.

Problem for forecaster is that media and public dowesn’t let then say the truth half the time. If they are expecting a beautiful spring post cold frontal day with possibluy a shower they are forces to report “cold in the wind” and “rain” for fear of upsetting someone.

That’s why you should do your own with the links given here.

me and mike fish will get our coats…………..

I agree with PP and others on this, MetOff data and forecasting is pretty accurate upto 24/48 hrs, you just need to interprete it and not expect it to be minute by minute or exactly correct where you’re standing. Maybe use it in conjunction with XCweather(wind), MWIS (mountains), weatheline (lakes) SAIS (scottish Avalanche info, if you’re scottish winter walking). Maybe also look at Metoff forecasts for nearby areas to get a better general view. They can’t be absolute, by the minute or exactly where you are standing at any given moment, but they can give a good indication of what to expect throughout a day. All the other worthwhile forecasts use the metoff, anything else (ie Metcheck, accuweather)is not worth looking at IMO.