Cycling UK Forum

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?

Dunno, ask Michael Fish.

Check the 'feels like' temperatures.

freeflow wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 8:59am Check the 'feels like' temperatures.

BBC doesn't have a "feels like" on the main display, which is what I'm looking at.
In any case, the "feels like" is not to relevant I would have thought since I am inside a tent sheltered from the wind. Though am measuring the actual outside temp, which is still very often/usually above the forecast horror low.

I’ve spotted he same, and concluded that it’s there to cover for localised variations, frost pockets and the like.

The very local, by parish or borough, forecasting is a bit of a con anyway, because the actual “forecasting point” is whatever the nearest recording/reporting station is, which you can find by selecting “past 24 hours”. In our case it’s about 15 miles away, which might not sound much, but is plenty far enough across some rolling hills to make a 2 degree difference ….. in fact on some days I can get 2 degrees by cycling up out of the broad, shallow valley in which I live, about half a mile.

I go direct to the Met Office site, ‘cos I can’t see the point in going to BBC or elsewhere which simply removes information and changes the pictures!

Hi,
You could always compare it to met app?
temperature can vary dramatically even at local range.
You also have to consider heat from the ground/walls/cloud cover.
Unless you are measuring a temperature in the same way It is recorded (which also reflects how it's forecast) you could always be several degrees out.

Hi,
I know the BBC supposedly went independent from weather (the Met office) some years ago.
But I don't know how independent they are?

NATURAL ANKLING wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 9:11am Hi,
You could always compare it to met app?

thanks but the metoffice often seems to disagree to a fair extent with the bbc (who I know used to use the met office data) - and not necessarily better - so another wormcan.
I don't know if there's a way of figuring out precisely where the weather measuring station is that is feeding the data/is the predicted point referred to. I do seem to recall that when I delved once I found that my bit of south London 5 or 6 miles from London Bridge was actually referenced to that, and of course central London is pretty much always warmer on winter nights.

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

Al

al_yrpal wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 9:23am I thought the BBC sacked the Met Office and uses Meteo or something (French?).

Al

bloody french
yes they use another company now, don't do it themselves, meteo rings a bell - don't know who owns it.
I assume they moved as they got a better price since I never thought there was any great issue with the met office (maybe now owned by a bunch of german venture capitalists though?)

Have been using the met office app a bit more recently - prefer it's presentation to the beeb in many ways.

And the beeb keeps nagging me to sign in and give my location for no good reason that I can see - no more reason to that than me looking at a map of outer mongolia and the map trying to insist that it needs to know where I am, or a book insisting on knowing all about me - what I had for breakfast - end of divert rant

Hi,
When the weather is measured, that is the temperature is measured.
It's not measured at ground level, it cannot be influenced by anything close by!

So when I said you need to measure the temperature in the same way I mean asked to be measured and not close proximity to the ground or anything solid.

Cloud cover in your local area will affect the air temperature for sure.
So you're Air temperature might well be different than that of several miles away.

We should look on the weather forecast as basically bit of a comparator, that's to say I always look at the air temperature where I live before I leave home.

Then I consult the weather prediction and take that into consideration.

If you're camping then you're lying or sitting on the ground and the temperature can feel quite different, I said feel different.
Measuring it and feeling it are two different things.
We all know what it's like when you drop into a valley Overnight on your bike

Sweep wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 9:26am

al_yrpal wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 9:23am I thought the BBC sacked the Met Office and uses Meteo or something (French?).

Al

bloody french
yes they use another company now, don't do it themselves, meteo rings a bell - don't know who owns it.
I assume they moved as they got a better price since I never thought there was any great issue with the met office (maybe now owned by a bunch of german venture capitalists though?)

Have been using the met office app a bit more recently - prefer it's presentation to the beeb in many ways.

And the beeb keeps nagging me to sign in and give my location for no good reason that I can see - no more reason to that than me looking at a map of outer mongolia and the map trying to insist that it needs to know where I am, or a book insisting on knowing all about me - what I had for breakfast - end of divert rant

Just tried the Met Office Weather App. Much better than the BBC! Actually identifies my location instead of saying I live in a village 2 miles away.

Bye bye BeeB

Al

I find the met office site even better than their app, almost a proper weather forecast, although it doesn’t have plots of isobars, or those little things with feathers on. Within the limits we’ve been talking about, it is very accurate too, especially if you look at the rain radar prediction maps at the bottom.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑8 Mar 2023, 9:07amThe very local, by parish or borough, forecasting is a bit of a con anyway, because the actual “forecasting point” is whatever the nearest recording/reporting station is

I've compared the Met Office forecast for Braintree against Andrewsfield, the nearest station at the flying club 4 miles to the west, and they're very similar, but not the same. I'd assumed they take the 3 or 4 nearest stations, and interpolate between them. Looking at the other locations listed, the next nearest are:

Wattisham 25m
Shoeburyness 29m
and Rothampstead 35m

....but I know that there's a station at the Writtle Agricultural College 12m away, because it's regularly listed on the BBC Look East forecasts on TV (and I think there's one at Stansted Airport 14m away as well).

On the BBC website, it explicitly says Andrewsfield is the source of their data for Braintree, but I can't compare forecasts directly because Andrewsfield is not among the options. (There's no such place as Andrewsfield, RAF Great Saling was renamed Andrewsfield after the death of a General called Andrews.) If I choose Gt. Saling instead, which is less than a mile East of the flying club, it's the same as Stebbing forecast, 1.8 miles west of Andrewsfield, but slightly different from the Braintree forecast 4 miles east. So even though they list only Andrewsfield as their source, it appears that they must also be doing some sort of interpolation of the data.

Back on the Met Office website, Bran End and Saling Hall (their nearest points to Stebbing and Great Saling) have slightly different forecasts to Andrewsfield, so it would appear that the Met Office's forecasts interpolate with slightly higher resolution than the BBC's.

I live and learn; I hadn’t spotted that it was interpolating. Jolly clever when you think about it.