BBC weather app oddity

[simonineaston]

All I'm saying is that the local authority I used to work at used Metcheck to determine if & when the gritter lorries went out.
https://www.metcheck.com/WEATHER/

screenshot of website

[st599_uk]

I thought the BBC sacked the Met Office and uses Meteo or something (French?).

Al

Nope, the Government required the BBC to put the provision of weather out to tender via OJEC rules (some speculation that they wanted to show that the UK government Met Office was the best value provider). The UK Government then managed to lose the tender.

[st599_uk]

All I'm saying is that the local authority I used to work at used Metcheck to determine if & when the gritter lorries went out.
https://www.metcheck.com/WEATHER/
Screenshot 2023-03-08 at 17.44.26.png

Metcheck is just a view of the American GFS ensemble. That doesn't take account of local geographic features, unlike UKMO or France Meteo or the BBC models.

You need actual forecasters to take that data and create an accurate prediction - like when the aforementioned Michael Fish correctly predicted that there wouldn't be a hurricane in the UK because a) a hurricane is a tropical revolving storm and we're not in the tropics and b) nowhere in the UK saw anything near hurricane force winds that night.

[Manc33]

I uninstalled it recently because it started asking me to log in to see the weather. I don't have an account with them and won't be making one so I just got rid of it.

[rjb]

The BBC weather app indicates our lowest temperature tonight at -3°C. The met office app shows it at +1°C.
I'm an optimist so choose the best of the offerings to suit my circumstances.

[Sweep]

All I'm saying is that the local authority I used to work at used Metcheck to determine if & when the gritter lorries went out.
https://www.metcheck.com/WEATHER/
Screenshot 2023-03-08 at 17.44.26.png

shows the value of certain thread diverts simon
am still mystified by the apparent BBC discrepancy in its hourly temps not hitting the predicted daily lows, but not to worry, checked out metcheck (think may have used in past but forgotten about it) - on your suggestion - design maybe a tad basic looking but manages to present a lot of info very succinctly on a single screen - seems better than beeb in that.
If you look down the side of the screen you can even pop up a laundry drying data subset which appears to tell you how long it wll take to dry a T shirt or towel - slots together temp/humidity/cloud and windspeed data I suppose.

[MrsHJ]

The met office no longer holds the bbc contract. It is now a french or Dutch organisation? (As mentioned above). Anyway I’ve given up using the bbc weather and have stuck with the met office - obviously it’s a forecast so not perfect but I think it’s closer more of the time.

[brianleach]

have stuck with the met office

Me too. It may be the settings but I like to see the hour by hour forecast of the Met Office one as the BBC app just seems to show the current/day. It seems to be pretty accurate for my purposes.

As I say I may not have the BBC app set up correctly so it may not be a fair comparison.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
I also use the met app.
On principle.
You can view a video of the weather and drag and pause it so you can get a good picture of when the rain will come and go.
Finding it useful and accurate also.

[pjclinch]

The BBC weather app indicates our lowest temperature tonight at -3°C. The met office app shows it at +1°C.
I'm an optimist so choose the best of the offerings to suit my circumstances.

This is the great thing about Interweb weather forecasting. Can't really be bothered today? surf around until you find an iffy forecast. Want to go out anyway, just cast about until you find an okay one!

Pete.

[Sweep]

The signin bbc app has just updated and tells me that it will now read the forecast to me.
As if i need that.
Can see myself using metcheck a lot more, particularly when in the NW land of drizzle - the bbc seems to overstate the threat/significance of rain. Southern wimps?

[Sweep]

The BBC weather app indicates our lowest temperature tonight at -3°C. The met office app shows it at +1°C.
I'm an optimist so choose the best of the offerings to suit my circumstances.

This is the great thing about Interweb weather forecasting. Can't really be bothered today? surf around until you find an iffy forecast. Want to go out anyway, just cast about until you find an okay one!

Pete.

[mattheus]

I very often look at the day forecasts on the BBC app and in addition to the interval temps it shows the day max and minimum.

This time of the year, a pretty low minus figure (say 2 or 4) is often shown, but when I look through the hourly forecasts for the same day/night very often indeed I can see no temp which is as low as the one they have quoted. Very often the lowest hourly temp shown is a good 2 degrees above the supposedly temp pits/horror shown by the daily forecast.

What's occurring? - is the BBC app the tech equivalent of the grumbly soul who always looks on the dark side of weather?

yr.no has started doing this recently-ish too! No idea why, but it's rarely far off so hasn't been a problem. So far ...

More annoying is that the "day min/max" seems to be for midnight-midnight ... so that could mean Sat night will freeze. OR Sunday night will freeze. AAAAAAAArrrrrgh!

[Sum]

Seemed the best place to put this question, since overnight lows clearly of interest to us campers.

May also apply to a degree (sorry) to the met office app, but haven't checked it in detail.

anyway, to the point.

I very often look at the day forecasts on the BBC app and in addition to the interval temps it shows the day max and minimum.

This time of the year, a pretty low minus figure (say 2 or 4) is often shown, but when I look through the hourly forecasts for the same day/night very often indeed I can see no temp which is as low as the one they have quoted. Very often the lowest hourly temp shown is a good 2 degrees above the supposedly temp pits/horror shown by the daily forecast.

What's occurring? - is the BBC app the tech equivalent of the grumbly soul who always looks on the dark side of weather?

According to the FAQs, there can be discrepancies between the max/min and the hourly forecasts:

There can be discrepancies seen between the maximum/minimum temperature given for the daily summary and the highest and lowest temperatures seen in the hourly breakdown. This is because the hourly value is given for "on the hour" whereas the max/min may occur between the hourly points so may be slightly higher/lower.

I usually notice a discrepancy of a degree, but not often 2 degrees, so I'm not certain if this explains it all.

[sjs]

The wind speeds are also a bit annoying. When the mean is less than about 20 mph they quote the mean. Above that, they give the max gust speeds. Thus, the number displayed is never between about 20 and 40 mph. I've never noticed an explanation of that. Maybe related to the Fish/hurricane debacle.