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Treacodactyl

Weather sites

Does anyone have a favourite weather site that's accurate? I tend to look at the Met Office site but recently it seems inaccurate for us. Not just the predictions but there's also a section where you can see the previous weather from your local station. Ours is only a mile or so away but even after hours of rain the reports state than no rain has fallen. Confused
Shane

Accuweather's fairly good. It has a UK & Ireland section (link at the top).
vegplot

My geography teacher at school used to say the best weather forecast is tomorrow's weather is likley to be same as the same as today.

I suppose on the whole he was right, except when you make plans then the opposite applies
LynneA

I use metcheck and UK Weather. Both have through the day breakdowns and longer range - 10 / 14 days.
gil

Met Office here.
Their nearest weather station is about 15 miles north over the watershed into another valley, which has slightly different weather to here, but generally not wildly different

I do find the Met Office's forecast is either too fast (weather arrives later than predicted), and very occasionally too slow (weather arrives before they said it would). But generally reasonable.
dougal

Shane wrote:
Accuweather's fairly good. It has a UK & Ireland section (link at the top).


Ummm
Quote:
National Overview for Tuesday:
UK: Broken cloud and some sunny intervals across the southern half of the United Kingdom on Monday with isolated to scattered showers in Wales and England. Outbreaks of rain and snow across Scotland.


Strange.
Not exactly detailed, and unfortunate.
Especially when the Met Office are predicting (warning of) severe weather (gale force winds + ~25mm rain) from 0000 Tuesday morning through to 0600 Wednesday!
Quote:
The Met Office expects further heavy and persistent rain to spread across from the west during Tuesday, with up to 25mm likely in places. That rain will be accompanied by strong southerly winds with gusts to gale or severe gale force over southern and southeastern England. The heaviest rain will transfer to northern Scotland later on Tuesday lasting into Wednesday morning. The heavy rain could lead to flooding in some areas and cause disruption to transport networks.


BTW the BBC website predicts that the rain arrives here about 0900 Tuesday with the wind up to 46 knots by lunchtime.
The more detailed your predictions, the greater chance of someone saying "you're wrong it didn't turn up until 1000" or the like.
To the BBC, I say "keep up the good work' -- and, mostly, it is damn good work.
Fee

http://www.xcweather.co.uk/ is great for wind info., Paul uses it a lot.
Contadino

Shane wrote:
Accuweather's fairly good. It has a UK & Ireland section (link at the top).


For my location at least, it's laughable. I have a Dashboard Widget for Accuweather, so it's really handy, but it's almost constantly the opposite of what actually happens. It manages to get the day/night bit right, but their temperature's always at least 10ºC higher, and if it forecasts sun it'll be raining and vice versa.

I suspect the accuracy varies dramatically by location.

Local wisdom is more reliable - scirocco blows for 5 days, followed by 3 days of the tramontagna. Scirocco is hot'n'humid, tramontagna is cold and dryer. But as one old neighbour replied once when asked about the weather forecast, "Only God can tell. Anyone else is a heretic."
Blue Peter

I look at www.metcheck.com


Peter.
James

metcheck for me also
James

Oh no, sorry....I used to use methceck, but now I use http://www.theweatheroutlook.com/

(it has a gardening forecast)
toggle

I tend to use the bbc to check weather. Tends to be fairly accurate, then they can tell me what it is like round here now by looking out the damn window at White City
lettucewoman

good job i didnt see this thread earlier - i would have bombarded you with sites - Im a real weather geek!!


Metcheck is OK - however their forecasts can change radically as they use data from the GFS ensemble model runs - these happen four times a day, and can vary hugely between say the 6z run and the 12z...I looked at metcheck the other day...it said it would be sunny - 12 hours later it had changed to sleet!!. Again, their forecasts are based on the GFS runs - which in recent months have been a tad inaccurate. These are all computer based runs, taking the available data and projecting what will happen - can't remember how many there are - one control and then I think 12 - 15 runs modelling what may happen over a period of time. ATM it looks like more of the same - weather coming from the atlantic, mostly mildish and wet with possibilities of snow over high ground on the back edges of the fronts coming in.
There is another called ECM which is often more accurate.

I use them, xc weather, theweatheroutlook, ukweatherworld, and a variety of satellite pics
www.meteox.com
and
http://wind.met.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/meteosat.cgi?speed=2&count=12&intervall=30&refresh=10&playmode=Endlos

are my favs.
Treacodactyl

Many thanks for all the links, I'll take a look next time I need to keep a close eye on the weather. As already mentioned it seems some sites are more accurate for certain areas. I used to use the BBC but found the Met Office site more accurate, but now I've found that to be inaccurate and some of the actual weather logging data to be quite wrong. When I posted the question up the Accuweather link was more accurate for me than the BBC or Met Office.
crofter

magicseaweed is good for wind http://magicseaweed.com/UK-Ireland-MSW-Surf-Charts/1/wind/in/
Contadino

crofter wrote:
magicseaweed is good for wind http://magicseaweed.com/UK-Ireland-MSW-Surf-Charts/1/wind/in/


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