Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
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Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#2Rags like the Daily Mail are FUDding the hell out of this story. The Guardian's take is at least a bit more balanced.
Personally, I think it's a good thing. I like the Met Office (and in the interests of disclosure have worked with it on a couple projects) but it shouldn't have an entitlement to providing weather data for the BBC.
I'd like to see something like MeteoGroup get the contract. Would be really interesting to see what it could bring to the table.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#3I half-jokingly tell people that if they get their forecast from the BBC (via the Met), they should expect the inverse weather.
I wonder if the BBC has checked the quality of the forecasts based on what actually happens? I use AccuWeather and the Aix Weather Widget (for Android) because they're nearly always right (where I live, at least) - and gives me much more useful information.
For example, I can't translate the Met's '50% chance of rain' - for a whole day - to real life. To me, that means it could not rain, or rain heavily all day, or anything in between.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#4I half-jokingly tell people that if they get their forecast from the BBC (via the Met), they should expect the inverse weather. I wonder if the BBC has checked the quality of the forecasts based on what actually happens? I use AccuWeather and the Aix Weather Widget (for Android) because they're nearly always right (where I live, at least) - and gives me much more useful information. For example, I can't translate the…
I actually learned that the rain percentage is not the percentage chance that it will rain but is in fact the percentage of the coverage area that they will expect to get rain. So 50% rain meaning no rain at all or rain for the whole day is entirely reasonable.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#5I've been using the Met Office Android app for some time. The app could use polish, but the data is superb. If you want to know if it's going to rain in the micro-region where you are now, there's nothing like it.
Edit: It's this one: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/mobile-digital-services...
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#6I half-jokingly tell people that if they get their forecast from the BBC (via the Met), they should expect the inverse weather. I wonder if the BBC has checked the quality of the forecasts based on what actually happens? I use AccuWeather and the Aix Weather Widget (for Android) because they're nearly always right (where I live, at least) - and gives me much more useful information. For example, I can't translate the…
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/in-depth/science-behind-pro...
First ghit. First duckduckgo hit.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#7I've been using the Met Office Android app for some time. The app could use polish, but the data is superb. If you want to know if it's going to rain in the micro-region where you are now, there's nothing like it. Edit: It's this one: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/mobile-digital-services...
I'd argue Weather Pro by MeteoGroup is far, far superior. The only thing I find the Met Office app useful for is additional detail on severe weather warnings.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#8I'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 the contract I see lots of back and forth noting accuracy - but Met Office does just as good a job as anyone else, for probably a much higher fee.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#9I've been using the Met Office Android app for some time. The app could use polish, but the data is superb. If you want to know if it's going to rain in the micro-region where you are now, there's nothing like it. Edit: It's this one: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/mobile-digital-services...
I'd argue Weather Pro by MeteoGroup is far, far superior. The only thing I find the Met Office app useful for is additional detail on severe weather warnings.
Thanks for the tip. Not that it makes a big difference, but I'll just note that the MeteoGroup app is a couple of quid, but the Met Office app is free.
Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue Weather Pro by MeteoGroup is far, far superior. The only thing I find the Met Office app useful for is additional detail on severe weather warnings.
Thanks for the tip. Not that it makes a big difference, but I'll just note that the MeteoGroup app is a couple of quid, but the Met Office app is free.
Yeah, to be fair that is worth noting. But I find that the increased accuracy, access to data and functionality makes it worth it.