Anyone else think the BBC weather is a bit rubbish now? (2024)

GEDA

theflatboy

porterclough

It’s terrible, nearly as bad as their ridiculous TV presentation with the country slanted to make Surrey appear bigger than Scotland.

metcheck.com is much more useful

MrAgreeable

BBC is usually accurate for conditions but a few hours adrift on time. Anything more then 24 hours in advance is generally pretty unreliable too.

Metcheck’s calculation of “real feel” is rubbish, and the fact that their weather forecasts go as far as a month in advance is just silly IMO. You might as well try and predict the second coming of Jesus.

diggers

DezB

nearly as bad as their ridiculous TV presentation with the country slanted to make Surrey appear bigger than Scotland.

It’s called PERSPECTIVE[/b]

I use http://www.ukweather.com since the BBC web one went crap

hora

porterclough

It certainly does reflect the BBC’s southern perspective.

mrsflash

DezB

It certainly does reflect the BBC’s southern perspective.

That’s what you want to see. But its because the map is shown with NORTH at the top. It would look strange the other way up eh?

(Sorry, I’ve got thing about this silly complaint, because a Scottish hubby of a friend went on about it. He lives in Winchester ffs!!)

clubber

crouch_potato

mountaincarrot

BBC weather presentations went pretty crap some years ago when they removed pressure and wind information, and invented something previously unheard of called a “weather front”. Personally I take little notice of BBC forecasts, there is much more useful data about these days.

For some good links take a look at Sailplane (Gliding) websites. There is plenty of stuff here for example which will lead you on to bigger and better stuff:
http://glidemet.co.uk/

porterclough

If it’s a map, it shouldn’t be skewed. If it’s a “3d” perspective flyover, you could do it from any direction, the camera should fly around and come back north to south looking south.

What is actually is, is a wrong and misleading map. It really irritates me and Sheffield isn’t even very far north (you might think it is, from the BBC’s “map”, but it’s not). If I was Scottish I’m sure I’d hate it even more.

mike_check

google “met office ‘your town'” and add bookmark!

and yea, the ‘3d’ map is crap!

clarkpm4242

I use this for up to 8 days
http://www.stronge.org.uk/charts.html
see pressure and cloud cover at the bottom

This for upto next 48 hours
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/satpics/latest_uk_vis.html
use Rainfall radar, observation and then forecasts links

…and http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/10209 for animations, though are harder to use nowadays.

To get a decent forecast you have to pull all the stuff together yourself over a period of hours and days ahead. Careful use of the Met Office rainfall radar can really make the difference in not getting piss wet through, choosing a route and time of ride.
Paul

TandemJeremy

GEDA

Bimbler

timber

BBC forecasting is mile off the mark at the moment – is the department on holiday?

Mostly use Accuweather and the Met office mountain forecasts to really know whats likely

CaptJon

What is actually is, is a wrong and misleading map. It really irritates me and Sheffield isn’t even very far north (you might think it is, from the BBC’s “map”, but it’s not). If I was Scottish I’m sure I’d hate it even more.

The vast majority of maps are skewed because they try to flatten the curvature of the Earth. Google map is terrible as it shows Greenland as larger than Africa ffs.

My problem with BBC weather is the lack of isobars. At least with them you can predict the weather yourself, or build in a bit of ‘play’ around their predictions.

scotia

clarkpm4242

Find the Europe – West maps and animations. That has isobars.

Paul

stuartie_c

Where is it TJ? Weather forecasts useless without one.

soops

radoggair

TandemJeremy

stuartie – go to UK weather / maps/ pressure – however its down at the moment.

No quick links from the forecast pages now

igm

its because the map is shown with NORTH at the top. It would look strange the other way up eh?

If it’s a map, it shouldn’t be skewed. If it’s a “3d” perspective flyover, you could do it from any direction, the camera should fly around and come back north to south looking south.

What is actually is, is a wrong and misleading map. It really irritates me and Sheffield isn’t even very far north (you might think it is, from the BBC’s “map”, but it’s not). If I was Scottish I’m sure I’d hate it even more.

I am Scots, living in Yorkshire. I find it funny. Useless as a map, but funny. In fact the whole BBC weather set up is a huge joke (did no one notice that they changed to the new look on April 1st – STW FACT*).

The best joke that the BBC paly is that their internet waether site and the (digital) teletext weather often disagree. The BBC PDA weather site is not too bad.

*STW facts may or may not bear resemblence to actaul events, people or places.

surfer

thisisnotaspoon

no, just that high pressures are notoriously hard to model.

A low will just move fronts accross the country, in a fairly regular way, very easy to model, even a 5 year old could probably guess the next days weather (just spin the low arround roughly the same as it did the day before).

Highs tend to sit there, untill all of a sudden they become too unstable and just fall apart.

If you looked back at the “metoffice/bbc/metcheck is crap” threads, i’d be supprised if they didnt corrlate fairly well with high pressure systems.

go buy some meterology textbooks, a lot of maps and start predicting your own weather if it bothers you, its actualy quite fun, especialy when you can tell your ridiing buddies its going to rain in 10 min time, despite the sunshine 🙂

GEDA

mountaincarrot

Stuartie:

http://meteonet.nl/aktueel/brackall.htm

odannyboy

apprently the people who came up with the 3d map nonsence approached itv who took one look at it and told them it was rubbish! they then went to the bbc who lapped it up (why!?)

its so cr@p it your not paying attention during the two seconds they zoom over where you live the whole broadcast is rubbish.

and another more important thing is theres always that flippin bloke doing
it. there was a time when some channels had a few hottie presenting it.sean lloyd (if im correct)on itv werent to bad from a distant memory…

nuke

montylikesbeer

I use Metcheck, its pretty good

metcheck

hora

CountZero

CHB

pantsonfire

I find windguru very good its for kite surfers obviously bloody useless if you live in Brum but it works for me as I am only a few minutes from Ainsdale beach one of the top wind surfing and kite buggying spots in the country. So its usually bob on for me.

http://www.windguru.com/int/index.php?sc=1064

clareymorris

I find this to be fairly accurate………….combined with met-check and a good ole look out of the window!!

Met Office Weather