Whats the best website for UK weather?

As above really. Best as in most accurate.

View the BBC human being forecasts.

Condensing weather into a simple symbol on a webpage is pretty difficult, so you really need a human being to talk you through their view on the forecast.

I still rate MWIS for the mountains – it has a human element the others lack. It can be a bit pessimistic though.

http://www.yr.no/

I’m enjoying the look of ventusky.com and it allows you to choose between three weather models.

If you want insight into WHY it’s so difficult to slap a symbol on a day and location – listen to the in-depth forecasts on the BBC site or go here.

xcweather has live data from airfields etc around the country. Now is accurate 🙂

Ventusky seems pretty decent and as scotroutes says, it allows you to view 3 different models. If they all agree there’s a fairly decent chance that what they say will happen, will actually happen.

The Express.

Based on last years efforts by various sites/apps i came to the conclusion the only half reliable forecast was to look out of the window in the direction the wind was coming from.
Lost count of the number of times forecast claimed it was sunny but was in fact unbroken cloud as far as the eye can see.

I’ve been using WeatherPro on my phone since it was first released, around the time the iP3G came out, and I find it as accurate as anything else out there – the satellite view and precipitation radar mean you can clearly see what the weather is really doing.
It’s good enough for their parent company, Meteogroup, to be what the Press Association use, and what the BBC will be using instead of the Met Office.

Cheers

Not a forecast site but
https://earth.nullschool.net
Shows it all in its beautiful chaos..

Raintoday.Co.UK

Shows the last dopler radar tracks of rainfall. So you can genuinely see if rain is on the way. Very accurate.

That an xcweather for me covers my needs.

Yr.no as bruneep says and mwis.org if I’m going into the hills.

Whatever provider you choose, check where the observations are being made for your location .

In the case of my home town both WeatherProHD and the BBC use observations from an RAF base 35 miles . So the forecasts are somewhat meaningless.

The RainToday app is very good for the short term view .

yr.no here too. They are almost to the minute accurate with when the rain is going to arrive.

Met office is pretty good – I use it for the rainfall radar and the rainfall forecasts.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/map/gcph3vm8s#?zoom=9&map=Rainfall&lon=-1.32&lat=51.40&fcTime=1409162400

You can change what the map shows from the menu within the map area.

Yr.no as well. AcuWeather (paid version) on the phone.

Condensing weather into a simple symbol on a webpage is pretty difficult, so you really need a human being to talk you through their view on the forecast.

This. Hence I mainly use the Met Office and just read the text. When people say things like “it’s forecast to rain at 3pm” I know they’ve just looked at the picture, when the text might say something like “showers moving through the area, becoming more likely in the afternoon” and so I’ll have a better idea of what might happen.

As above yr.no

yr.no here too

MWIS for them there hills

but for every day use here is another shout for XC Weather uses weather stations at airfields and other locations around the country.

another vote for yr.no here

I use accuweather, who give hourly %age chance of rain – which is pretty handy for the commute.

Their “real feel” temperature is fairly good for an indication of what to wear.

molgrips – Member 
View the BBC human being forecasts.
Condensing weather into a simple symbol on a webpage is pretty difficult, so you really need a human being to talk you through their view on the forecast.

A lot of the time they summarise UK weather too much and following complaints they weren’t focusing on “the north” enough, they focus on the north a lot.

e.g. “It will be raining across the UK today”… in the north. Map zooms in and slowly pans across Scotland and northern bits, then brief swing south and zoom out and they’ll talk about weather in “the south” which could be anything south of Newcastle!

Then sometimes they cut short on telling you what it will be like tomorrow and the next day. I don’t really care about today as I can tell that just from looking out the window!

Depending on the forecast you watch. At certain times they do a longer detailed forecast.

Of course there are local forecasts but I find that often isn’t anywhere near accurate. Says it won’t rain, but it rains and vice versa. Met Office site I find more accurate for local weather. Used to be BBC was on par with it, but then BBC have dropped Met Office.

http://www.metcheck.com/ is worth a look. It aggregates predictions from various sources including amateurs. Though it used to have a habit of going bonkers and predicting 1000mph winds.

BBC app. Clear graphics. Good click/swipe structure. Accurate enough on a daily basis.

rofl @ Daily Express

rofl @ metcheck

Metcheck was the only one that has predicted 327mph winds, and snow in Rome at +15C. Gave up with that when the one of the owners got banged up and registered on the sex offenders register. I guess he must be out by now?

yr.no for me, but also using bergfex for the Austrian Alps, or MWIS etc. for the hills when I’m back in UK. And Blitzortung during summer if there’s likely to be thunderstorms… can see them coming.

At certain times they do a longer detailed forecast.

Yes, and they are on the internet, which is what I meant.

In the case of my home town both WeatherProHD and the BBC use observations from an RAF base 35 miles . So the forecasts are somewhat meaningless.

They don’t forecast based on those observations. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

I bet no-one posting on this thread has actually analysed accuracy. I suspect everyone places their loyalty in whichever gets lucky on a few days they’ve checked.

It’s a funny thing to assess anyway. If a site says rain in Cardiff at 3pm, and it rains at 4pm – that’s not bad accuracy. However if it says rain in Cardiff at 3pm and it ends up raining in Newport a few miles away at 3pm, and Cardiff stays dry – is that accurate? In terms of the weather it got the location a few miles out, which is pretty good. But Cardiff inhabitants will be wailing about inaccurate weather forecasts.

I do use the Meteogram on yr.no (in direct contradiction of what I said above) when I need a quick check as it gives a lot of information in just a single image.

In general though, I don’t find yr.no very accurate. [Leaves for heresy thread]

My mate uses xcweather.

He’s a fisherman, that’s good enough for me.

We use the Met-office at work but it’s a text summary by the duty forecaster, much more nuanced than a sun symbol at 3pm.

I’ve spent time at the met office and seen the data they use, it’s phenomenal the volume of data coming in and the volume of past data used to run the algorithms. Even them most of the time the machine spits out a 50/50 scenario and it’s down to the duty forecaster to make the call.

This was linked on another thread. It’s very pretty, but also has been pretty accurate this week –
https://www.ventusky.com/