Sick of poor weather forecasting - what do you use ?

[klaas]

The Norwegian site made me remember that WeatherSpark | Weather Graphs, Maps & More is amazing.

[Jacomus]

The Norwegian site made me remember that WeatherSpark | Weather Graphs, Maps & More is amazing.

That is seriously cool. Bookmarked

[YahudaMoon]

The weather forecast is looking dodgy again

BBC weather report for the next two days went something like this ' Thursday. Patchy rain from right dawn south ta reet oop north with sunny spells. Temperature is also like a yo yo with hail stone chucked in. Friday or Saturday looks like rain everywhere.

Im thinking if I could do an audax DIY that goes round these patchy rain clouds so I stay dry ? Need some gizmo weather GPS thing ? Thing is You could end up anywhere. Sounds fun and there be no chance of ending up in Yorkshire.

[GruB]

I still look at the Met Office site before I leave home so I know which bike to use and what kit to wear / take with me ( unless of course it is already raining and then I know by looking out the back door. 

But I've also found Weatherbug for my Blackberry to be of use.  It sits on the home screen of my phone and displays a graphic for the current weather ( clouds / sun / rain clouds etc ) along with a temperature overlaid.  When you click on the icon you then get wind direction and speed as well.  It is simple information and exactly what I want to see.

[AndyK]

 

But I've also found Weatherbug

I tried Weatherbug, but apparently weather doesn't exist outside of America. 

[GruB]

I thought that in the beginning but then I found all the UK ones. 

[AndyK]

It cannot find any UK locations, not even London.

[Alouicious]

Poor weather forecasting?

Disc brakes and full mudguards.

[GruB]

It cannot find any UK locations, not even London.

The trick I think is to find the nearest Met Office base unit to your location.  I did that by picking the Lyneham Wiltshire base or clicking on it and then Devizes came up.  On my desktop I used both Marlborough and Devizes to cover both directions for my weather although at present Devizes is my daily end run.

[Biggsy]

I have the WeatherCenter gadget on my Windows 7 desktop - nice and attractive.

From a browser, I use weather.com.  You can get hour-by-hour results for any local area, including wind speed and direction.  It's reliable most days, though spectacularly wrong occasionally.

[mattc]

Another variation on the rain radar idea:
Will it Rain Today?

Which would be a really great site if they didn't assume my monitor was a LOT bigger 

[cycleman]

i use that a lot .i have just checked it and ........... yes it will  and quite a lot  .good for my weeds though 

[perpetual dan]

I've been using yr.no + BBC on the web, and adjusting my confidence depending on the similarity.

Any advice for good android weather apps for the UK?
The yr.no one wasn't obliging last night (in Norwegian).
The others I've tried give a summary for the day, with emphasis on what is happening now*. What I'd like is something that breaks the day down a bit, like the web ones.
I guess I could just use a browser, but press a button and don't faff about appeals.

* I don't need to to know what is happening now, I have windows for that.

[Sergeant Pluck]

I've been using yr.no + BBC on the web, and adjusting my confidence depending on the similarity.

Any advice for good android weather apps for the UK?

I've found yr.no (best I've found so far) to be a bit hit and miss recently - and the mobile version is crap.

I found a good Android app that is very effective - it's simply a summary of the rain radar from the BBC, presumably derived from the Met Office:

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.bitplane.android.rainwatch&feature=order_history

It only does one thing, rain, but it does it in a very simple and effective way - use the scrolly thing at the bottom.

[Feline]

+1 for yr.no – Været for Norge og verden fra Meteorologisk institutt og NRK

[Simonb]

Just use the MetO/BBC. Best of the bunch.

[Jaded]

I use Weather Pro on the iPhone and iPad. Not cheap, but pretty accurate. Also it gives you the rain radar for the last 4 hours (and a forecast if you subscribe) so you can see if you are getting wet.

[mattc]

+1 for yr.no – Været for Norge og verden fra Meteorologisk institutt og NRK

OK, I'm quite impressed with this site so far. Dunno if it's more accurate than the UK sites, but the interface is at least as good. APART FROM:
the "precipitation" column. What does
06:00–12:00    Rain. For the period: 06:00–12:00    4°    2.9 – 3.7 mm
... mean? Is that 3mm over the whole 6 hours?


(supplementary question, not specific to that site: how much rain is that, in layman's terms?  Where can I see how much we had, say this morning?!? )

[rogerzilla]

The Met Office were predicting a dry day today, as late as 9pm last night.

It hissed it down until lunchtime and then drizzled until teatime.

Useless shower; it wasn't even *that* windy so it should have been predictable.

[Feanor]

I find Metcheck to be not too bad for the next day or two, but it has it's issues.

The biggest issue I have is it's website-failures.
It's been broken on and off for months, with VBscript runtime failures.

Secondly, their model appears to need some sanity-checking and upper bounds set on the preicted windspeeds.   It's not un-common to see 300mph predicted!

[Wendy]

I use Weather Pro on the iPhone and iPad. Not cheap, but pretty accurate. Also it gives you the rain radar for the last 4 hours (and a forecast if you subscribe) so you can see if you are getting wet.

It's very good indeed. German innit.

[Jurek]

This one for its advanced flexibility and accuracy - but even they got it spectacularly wrong between Friday and yesterday 

[slohill]

This one for its advanced flexibility and accuracy - but even they got it spectacularly wrong between Friday and yesterday 

Like others, I used to use Metcheck, but it's often gone walkabout now.  Then I went on to using BBC.co.uk/weather which is reasonably good, but restricted to 5 days of which the first 2 only are given in any detail (and then not as much as metcheck used to give).  This new site from Jureck looks really good---shall follow it with interest and hopefully a degree of trust.

[Wendy]

If you're looking for reasonable accuracy, don't be looking at more than 12 hours in advance. 5 day forecasts are very nearly as worthwhile as homeopathy.

Best results come from 6 hour forecasts, combined with a looksee out the window, and a look at rain radar history over the previous few hours. You can do that here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/observations/?tab=map&map=Rainfall

Quite a few cities have an extensive online camera system, so that's a good way to look out of many windows all over the city from the comfort of your armchair to get an idea of the wet or dryness.

[psd]

OK, I'm quite impressed with this site so far. Dunno if it's more accurate than the UK sites, but the interface is at least as good. APART FROM:
the "precipitation" column. What does
06:00–12:00    Rain. For the period: 06:00–12:00    4°    2.9 – 3.7 mm
... mean? Is that 3mm over the whole 6 hours?


(supplementary question, not specific to that site: how much rain is that, in layman's terms?  Where can I see how much we had, say this morning?!? )

Officially (according to the Met Office), light rain is <0.5 mm/hr, moderate 0.5-4 mm/hr, heavy >4 mm/hr. Showers have a different classification; moderate is 2-10 mm/hr.

So 3 mm over 6 hrs, assuming it's fairly continuous and doesn't all land on your head at once, is fairly light.