[Closed] Weather warning - stating the obvious

Complaining that nobody warned us.

I find the BBC get it wrong even on the day. Tuesday was supposed to be biblical from 9am. It was beautiful right upto 6pm when light rain, then rain started.

Years ago we had the 'oops' and 'it's only a forecast' now they blame 'global warming' even though they have the capability to track cloud/moisture movement live.

Having to look out the window ourselves?

Just looked at BBC weather for my area.

Well, what did you expect? You looked at a weather forecast and were told what the weather would be. I'd say that's you fault... 🙂

Same as hora, have found BBC utterly useless this year. They can't even forecast 3-4hrs in advance let alone 1-5days.

And the sad part of all that is the BBC get their data from the met office who have a shiney new supercomputer thats supposed to be giving much more accurate forecasts.

BBC use meteogroup now I think?

No, still met office according to the small print on the bottom of the main weather page

Edit: Google says meteogroup to take over in 2017

BBC and Met Office often have different forecasts from the same data. BBC national and local and local forecasts can vary, as can TV and online.

Mind you, yr.no also seems less reliable these days.

Should be raining here this morning, but would have been a lovely commute in. If I wasn't nursemaiding a vomiting daughter....

I've found Metcheck much better at predicting weather here in Southampton this year, compared to BBC.

Gave up with Metcheck some years ago when it kept going bonkers and predicting 900mph winds or would go off line for days at a time. It's crowdsourced data and dodgy data can trip up massively. Didn't seem to have a sanity filter on the data.

Other than that it was okay. Really was only accurate for the current day, but then looking out the window is fairly accurate too.

May have improved though since last looked at it.

Much improved on how it used to be, not seen biblical wind predictions in some time!

now they blame 'global warming'

Er, no they don't. For a start global warming isn't the term anymore, it's climate change, because not all the world will warm. Climate change is blamed for long term unusual trends, such as a hot summer or an increase in exceptional rainfall events, not day-to-day weather.

Anyway, what if you were, for example, two hundred miles away and were working in your area today? You wouldn't know it had been snowy, or that the snow had melted, or that it was icy. This happens to me all the time when planning bike rides, working on site etc. So, yes, they are useful.

If they just said "could be showery" that would probably do for pretty much most of the time.

Really well **** me, never would have guessed, where would we be without weather warnings

I think you over-estimate a lot of people's intelligence and sense of personal responsibility. If they didn't say it, and someone crashed their car, they'd be bitching at the weather forecasters for not saying anything.

Mind you, yr.no also seems less reliable these days.

There are reasons for that. We've had snow in November and down here in the windy wet West we've not had a single proper Atlantic depression all autumn. This year's weather is not normal.

May I suggest you read a little bit beyond the simple forecast if you want to understand how weather forecasts get made and why they are inaccurate at times. [url= http://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twoother/latest.aspx ]This is a good place to start.[/url]

Or you could just piss and moan about it - cos that's so much fun and make you feel superior to all these so-called experts, doesn't it?

BBC and Met Office often have different forecasts from the same data.

That's because people want websites to have a little raindrop symbol when it's going to rain. But really, there's a chance of rain, say 40%. So different websites have a different probability threshold that produces the rain symbol.

I just find BBC come on with a big headline weather warning for snow... oh, Scotland.

They're so obsessed with not offending Scotland, the UK summary weather is often whatever is happening in Scotland. The spin round the UK on the map spends a while focusing on Scotland and then it just pulls out to the rest of the country. Other day they said "the south" and referred to Yorkshire!

May I suggest you read a little bit beyond the simple forecast if you want to understand how weather forecasts get made and why they are inaccurate at times. This is a good place to start.

Or you could just piss and moan about it - cos that's so much fun and make you feel superior to all these so-called experts, doesn't it?

Easy tiger, getting a bit carried away there.
No one is claiming to be superior to any experts, and no-one is claiming its necessarily easy.

However having on numerous occasions looked on various weather sites and found they are telling me its going to be sunny/light cloud for the majority of the day, and opening the curtains tells me its heavy cloud and showery - well somethings f'd up there isn't it.
Sure long term forecasts are hard, but 3hr forecasts of if its going to be clear skies or heavy overcast shouldn't be that hard - especially with £97mil worth of super computer grinding away on it.

If it were easy they wouldn't need a super computer.

I got a frost alert from my caravan, it was 1degree in south west scotland at 00:11 🙂 I dressed accordingly this morning.

*checks posting history to see when I've offended molgrips* 😯

I suspect molgrips either works at the met office or the bbc to have over reacted in such a way 🙂

Or maybe he slipped on black ice this morning but hadn't checked the weather forecast 🙂

No, I just hate it when people whinge about science without understanding it!

Sure long term forecasts are hard, but 3hr forecasts of if its going to be clear skies or heavy overcast shouldn't be that hard

No? It's easy, and they get it wrong? So.. all these years, all that science, and you have a better way, do you? Maybe you should write to them. Or maybe post it up here?

^ 🙂

You're an angry guy, Molgrips.

Sometimes I am yes 🙂

I've never seen anyone get in such a rage about the weather before 🙂

I like it when they tell you what the weather was like the day before - er that's not really a forecast.

The BBC forecasts are just a guide, clearly it isn't accurate and not meant to be.

A lot of industry use the Met Office for thier data, I suspect they also use other sources of data to correlate a better prediction.

But that's all it is, a prediction, not the truth.

Molgrips is right though.

If a panel of experts and their computer can't always get it right, that's probably because it's not easy.

Plus, anecdote isn't evidence. Those who "frequently see mistakes in the forecast" are showing confirmation bias.

Produce some real data please.

APF

what Molgrips and APF said, as usual.

🙂

APF

At the risk of confirmation bias - I think the forecast accuracy has decreased in the last couple of years. Surely it should be getting a little better...?