One of the weather presenters on the Beeb recetly said the Met Officeâs 5-day f/c is now something like 90% accurate. Well, given the way the local area weather f/c detailing for my area changes day on day, with often radical updated changes in f/c for days 2/3/4/5, I can only believe itâs accurate as to 1-day ahead. Many times this year itâs been f/c to rain, sometimes heavily, and nada!
The BBC app does seem rather conservative, with frequent warnings. Too many I would say.
Today we have high winds and heavy rain predicted but I was surprised that there were no yellow warnings as there usually is when the weather is a bit miserable.
Not directly related to lightning storms, but I did look into the predicted wind speeds measure. When it is shown in white it is an average speed (up to 20 knots or so). When shown in black it is predicted peak gusts (above 40 knots or so). Hardly obvious to a typical user!
I have 3 weather Apps and found them all to be wholly unreliable. It would seem to me, that if there is the slightest chance of a particularly unpleasant weather phenomenon, then the BBC one will lead with that ever time. I often find that this is totally spurious in most cases.
So saying, they have been perversely pretty correct about the rain in Derbyshire this week. As such, we have decided to come home a day earlyđ¤ˇđťââď¸
The BBC weather app is a forecast, in other words, this is what they expect, but it might (& does) change, itâll very likely rain, but forecasting lightning is very hit and miss.
But if they are forecasting that conditions are right for lightning, better safe than sorry.
I also look at Weather Radar, this gives a moving radar track of weather over the last 2 hours and also logs all ground lightning strikes. Lightning tends to travel as a cell, so the track can be estimated, if itâs heading my way, I unplug, but if it looks like itâs a miss, maybe not.
Whenever in UK in recent years (I guess since BBC ended its relationship with them ) I have found Met Office noticeably more reliable than BBC weather, and so abandoned bothering with BBC weather altogether.
There are several lightning apps for smartphones: I have My Lightning Tracker and LiveLightning on mine.
On Monday night between approximately 1:00 - 2:00 am in north London we experienced a very intense thunder and lightning storm. Donât recall when I last witnessed such an intensity of lightning. What struck me was the contrast between the first period when there was complete calm and the second period when the wind suddenly whipped up into storm force, accompanied by extremely heavy rain - all driven onto my not quite closed bedroom window with messy results!
Iâm a long time user of the Met Office app. It used to be pretty accurate but I find it decreasingly so. These days they refresh their predictions on a near hourly basis. The trick seems to be to look for a day, a few days out, where the forecast is more static, for doing any major outside work.
I think weather forecasts are basically incorrect. They change too much, even if you check the forecast in the morning, you canât rely on it as itâs all changed later on.
I think now that they have become very complex and elaborate weather reporting apps.
Not surprised the BBC feel the Met office is 90% accurate considering the BBC uses the inferior (imho) weather forecasts from the metro group headquartered in Holland !
I find the Met Office app, fairly accurate for where I live but as others have said it does keep updating the forecast much more often now, so I tend to look at it more often now. I wonder if this is because climate change is making the weather harder to accurately predict these days.
âWeatherâ as a word is a polysemous word.
Other than itâs contronyms of âto endureâ or âto wear away.â It also literally means the observation of.
No wonder thereâs confusion.
