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Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

theguardian.com

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Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#71

Post by falsedan »

ars wrote: post #29
binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

> East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days Interestingly in the US, the East Coast forecast is more accurate than the West Coast. This is because the trade winds in the US mostly move West to East, so most of the Weather moves in that direction as well. There are more weather sensors on land then in the Sea, so there is more data available to make a forecast with.

> This is because the [westerlies] [...] move West to East

FTFY

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#72

Post by DanBC »

dtf wrote: post #55

Not sure if available worldwide, but there was a very interesting Radio 4 program recently, "What's the Point of The Met Office?", asking all sorts of awkward questions of this venerable institution. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06418l5 Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate cha…

Quentin Letts is a climate change denier.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/05/whats-the...

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#73

Post by DanBC »

dtf wrote: post #59
alecdbrooks wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate change policy. It doesn't seem that interesting to me. One of the reasons supercomputers are built in the first place is for studying weather and climate [0]. And "politically contentious" or not, climatology is a reasonable thing for a meteor…

I take it you didn't listen to the programme.

I did. It was mostly horseshit. If there's anything you think is particularly important you're probably better off pulling put those points and presenting them independantly. There were so many innaccuracies in the program that usin it discredits any point you want to make.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#74

Post by pbowyer »

DanBC wrote: post #70
buserror wrote: post #67

As a photographer, I try to follow up weather when I'm out and about. As many people have reported, the met office is next to useless, even on the short term! One I've found works /wonder/ is the Norwegian weather service at http://www.yr.no/ . I'm not kidding, these guys not only give pretty accurate forecast, but they over england and they provide it in neat meteograms that are quite precise and easily read. Now, h…

Why does the met office get international recognition for accurate forecasting if it's so useless? http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/accuracy/forecasts

I don't know, but I second the recommendation for yr.no. As a Brit, I find the Met Office to be more inaccurate for 3-5 days ahead than yr.no. On the day itself the Met Office isn't bad, but I look at http://raintoday.co.uk instead to time my trips out between showers. Perhaps it comes to timeframe, or vagueness.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#75

Post by Brakenshire »

notatoad wrote: post #37
binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

It's probably worth noting that Forecast.io and Dark Sky use the Met Office's radar, prediction system, and severe weather warning system (in conjunction with other data sources) to create their forecasts.

Just yesterday I was at a garden party where they predicted rain from 11am to 8pm, BBC predicted it would stop at 3pm, and that's what happened. Very nice web app, but in my experience Forecast.io's predictions aren't very good.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#76

Post by richdougherty »

Interesting that New Zealand's MetService/Metra is in the running. New Zealand is an island like the UK, so weather forecasting is difficult here too. MetService currently supplies the BBC's weather graphics.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#77

Post by krishan711 »

binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

I've lived in the UK my whole life and was not even aware forecasts could be reliably accurate so far in advance!

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#78

Post by reasonishy »

justincormack wrote: post #63
megablast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate change policy. I am confused at why this is contentious, this is exactly what I would expect them to do?

Its not contentious. The program was by an anti science climate change denier and was a total pile of shite.

> anti science climate change denier

Not everything is quite so black and white. You shouldn't be so quick to divide people into "goodies" and "baddies". You can be absolutely against spending public money on climate change research, whilst not being 'anti science'.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#79

Post by tommyd »

binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

I've found that Weather Underground[0] seems to be more accurate than most - not sure if this is actually the case or it's just a perception thing though (I believe they "crowd-source" the sensors somewhat, in that people can install relevant hardware and software at home to provide meteorological data, and also the app asks for feedback if the current weather data is correct or not)! I trust it enough to decide whether to bring a coat or not for that day - as others have mentioned, I had no idea the relative accuracy of forecasts in the UK is lower than elsewhere, interesting!

[0] http://www.wunderground.com/

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#80

Post by keithpeter »

DanBC wrote: post #31
keithpeter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup - you are somewhere on a fairly narrow island with warm water flowing South to North and a cold wind at high altitude blowing West to East (or is it East to West? I always get that mixed up). It is going to be slightly changeable. I'm assuming the Met will still bid for the contract, and we shall see who gets it. Pity them the first time they get it badly wrong!

The met has bid for the contract, and lost the bid. The BBC and the met have both independantly confirmed tha. The met office isn't going to be providing weather data to the BBC. Some of the staff (the presenters tended to be real meteorologists workig for the met office) might transfer over; severe weather stuff is still going to come from the met office; the Shipping Forecast is not a met office thing so should be…

I stand corrected, thanks.
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