In the ‘Past’. Certainly.
Met Office Forcasts have had ‘Enbedded Codes’.
For both National and International. Intelrgence and Security puposes.
[Ghost Internal Communication.]
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I’ve been comparing the two, the MET and the Beeb for the last two months and they generally disagree …worse … neither of them are right.
I may as well just stick my head out of the window and twitch my nose.
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E
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Weather and radar is my go too.
It’s forecast is to the minute.
Fantastic.
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I find the Beeb 24 hour local forecast is very accurate.
The week ahead isn’t too bad but timings can vary but that’s not their fault.
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Not Accuweather -they are the WORST! I’ve been standing in rain while Accuweather has said it is sunshine. And guess what Alexa uses?
Met can be flaky especially in Scotland/changeable regions but it’s pretty good. BBC is random.
Dark Skies used to be good until Apple bought it, it’s now not good at all.
Ah I didn’t know that - not that it’s made much difference - the BBC are still being pessimistic:
The Met Office:
BBC:
Might be ‘feels like’ temps vs Met’s which are inside their stations, which isn’t a real world temp, sheltered from wind etc.
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I’m not sure but they just list it like that …so I would imagine most people think that’s the temperature for the day. I really don’t trust the BBC anymore…
It just goes to show you that computer modeling can’t be relied upon even over the short term, so how can it possibly predict climate change?
Computer modeling is based on facts inputted by humans on the likelihood that because it’s happened before it will happen the same again… 
As we know, the universe is infinite and often sends us a curved ball.
Put that in yer algorithms and smoke it…
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My opinion on the weather forecast is, the only job you can be 95% wrong and still keep your job.
We had a local 7 days forecast for rain. With severe storms with hail and tornadoes possible. All we got was rain that didn’t even get the driveway completely wet. The joke here if you get a few drops on you windshield, not even enough to turn on the windshield wipers, it’s considered rain.
On the national weather morning forecast it shows rain and storms from San Antonio up to Chicago. We don’t even get clouds and the closest rain is up at Dallas or the Red river, 3 to 5 hours away.
All I want is to watch the weather radar and I can predict the weather better than the forecast predictions.
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I check two different weather forecasts. One on my phone and one on the computer. The phone one is consistently more optimistic - 1-2 deg higher temp and most often less rain. Both are usually wrong - it is often either hotter or colder than predicted. Worse, they both under-estimated a recent storm. We had 130 km/h gusts of wind and centimetres of rain. Luckily I heeded the warnings our insurance company pushes out and tied / stacked / weighted as much as I could.
As I understand it all the online weather forecasting is pretty much automated. Bunch of climate stations (rain, wind, pressure) and an app to assimilate and predict. But local farmers pay for a different service that they swear by and regularly they have much better forecasts. That is the answer - get to know a farmer.
The BBC probably pays a lot of money for the Met Office forecast.
When I was last in the UK I emailed the Met Office asking why their radar was such poor quality compared to the Australian BOM. They emailed me a nice and very informative message back saying that it is all to do with funding.
It turns out that BOM is completely funded by the Australian government and its services such as radar images, forecasts etc are therefore free to anybody that wants them whereas the UK Met Office is not 100% government funded but has to make money from subscribers so it cannot give its services away free.
That probably explains why third parties who pay get a better service and more information than the great unwashed.
Third party as in volunteers? Or different companies? How do they calibrate them?
Reason I ask - I have sensors and displays in my flat for humidity and temperature, ranging from good to Poundland jobbies. Even when calibrating them via a 75% salts humidity bag, and adjusting the display - they still weirdly disagree!
Made me realise how hard this stuff is, and I have to take a mean of two sensors to get a sort of figure…but also still 1-2% out. Update Intervals, technology, even battery levels and types all change the result. As doies enclosures etc for wind/weather for outside stations.
Which basically says: you can’t really crowdfund this stuff with members of the public. You need it to be all the same equipment or similar and calibrated to the same standards. And checked regularly.