I tend to rely on the Google weather widget built into Google on my phone, though I do look at the BBC weather App as well
Visually they might say the same thing, but display it differently. For example I was looking at the forecast for last Friday md afternoon and was surprised to see a light rain cloud on the Google App but not on the BBC one, but when I dug down both had a 15-20% chance of a light shower at 3pm, but showed it differently.
The difficulty with weather forecasting to a local level was demonstrated yesterday. I was following the rainfall radar and there were plenty of showers around, however no rain fell where I am in Maidstone. I watched the rain on the radar and it bypassed us, but only a short distance away, rain was falling. The same happened a couple of weeks ago when some areas of Kent had torrential rainfall, but we had very little.
My mate works for the met office and says Accuweathers 45 day forecast is almost entirely pointless. It is impossible to say what the weather is going to be like a month in advance, and even 7 days out is tough.
Yep, have a degree in meteorology and can confirm it's nonsense. The UK happens to be in one of the most unpredictable positions for forecasting as our weather systems can come from 4 different directions. A 7 day forecast gives you a rough idea but to be honest, no point looking further than 3 days ahead for certainty
The difficulty with weather forecasting to a local level was demonstrated yesterday. I was following the rainfall radar and there were plenty of showers around, however no rain fell where I am in Maidstone. I watched the rain on the radar and it bypassed us, but only a short distance away, rain was falling. The same happened a couple of weeks ago when some areas of Kent had torrential rainfall, but we had very little.
The radar display is an interpretation of the data received from the radar signal so isn’t always correct. Eg some rain dies out before it reaches the ground. Also, as the radar points slightly upwards, the further you are from a radar station the less accurate it can become.
My mate works for the met office and says Accuweathers 45 day forecast is almost entirely pointless. It is impossible to say what the weather is going to be like a month in advance, and even 7 days out is tough.
Yep, have a degree in meteorology and can confirm it's nonsense. The UK happens to be in one of the most unpredictable positions for forecasting as our weather systems can come from 4 different directions. A 7 day forecast gives you a rough idea but to be honest, no point looking further than 3 days ahead for certainty
Isn’t it a general rule that, every 10 years, the accuracy of a forecast x days ahead becomes x+1 days ahead. AI may be changing this, though.
I tend to rely on the Google weather widget built into Google on my phone, though I do look at the BBC weather App as well
Visually they might say the same thing, but display it differently. For example I was looking at the forecast for last Friday md afternoon and was surprised to see a light rain cloud on the Google App but not on the BBC one, but when I dug down both had a 15-20% chance of a light shower at 3pm, but showed it differently.
It's currently raining in Golders Green. The Google App has rain in its forecast, whereas the BBC App has bright sunshine all afternoon and 0% rain.
That’s only helpful if you want to know what’s happening right now. If I want to plan a day out or eg a picnic it would be good to know what’s predicted. My gripe here is that BBC are not just a bit wrong but 100% wrong and it’s a common occurrence.
72% chance that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today, which is close to saying look out the window to get a fairly good probability of what's coming- if i recall correctly!
If you go outside and activate more senses than just sight, temperature and wind aspects can also be better estimated, probably.
(The figure of 72% is probably lower these days with influences of climate change).
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Visually they might say the same thing, but display it differently. For example I was looking at the forecast for last Friday md afternoon and was surprised to see a light rain cloud on the Google App but not on the BBC one, but when I dug down both had a 15-20% chance of a light shower at 3pm, but showed it differently.
I also use rainfall radar tracking with Wundermap and My Lightning Tracker.
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap?lat=51.27&lon=0.519&zoom=8&pin=&rad=1&rad.type=00Q&wxsn=0&svr=0&cams=0&sat=0&riv=0&mm=0&hur=0
The difficulty with weather forecasting to a local level was demonstrated yesterday. I was following the rainfall radar and there were plenty of showers around, however no rain fell where I am in Maidstone. I watched the rain on the radar and it bypassed us, but only a short distance away, rain was falling. The same happened a couple of weeks ago when some areas of Kent had torrential rainfall, but we had very little.
If I'm indoors the ITV forecast is extremely accurate.
Today in Bromley the sun disappeared around 10am and it's been cloudy ever since, getting increasingly thundery.
But the BBC weather still has 100% sunshine even though it's updated hourly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/br1
If you go outside and activate more senses than just sight, temperature and wind aspects can also be better estimated, probably.
(The figure of 72% is probably lower these days with influences of climate change).