Potus ???

[peds]

  On 12/04/2025 at 10:09, Mick Dempsey said:

Compared to when I was young, the weather forecast is very accurate. 

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Weren't they still using the pine cone technique when you were young grandad?

 

People these days seem to think that the forecast is inaccurate because they can't inform a specific individual exactly what time it will start raining in the 3 square feet that they occupy at any given moment. 

Personally I'm amazed at how successful the predictions can be with scant data. It's like magic. 

[Mick Dempsey]

The satellite imagery is fairly well established, even when I was a boy. 

It’s the computer programs predicting the likely scenarios that has caused the improvement in forecasting. 
At least that was my understanding of it. 

[GarethM]

There was a TV programme that explained why the met office accuracy went down after they moved to the west country 

 

In part due to the new algorithms, but also far too much data into the system causing poor outputs especially for city sourced data.

 

The computer equivalent of target blindness.

 

Especially when they proclaimed the hottest x,y,z from the tarmac runway of Heathrow.

[openspaceman]

  On 12/04/2025 at 10:59, Mick Dempsey said:

The satellite imagery is fairly well established, even when I was a boy. 

It’s the computer programs predicting the likely scenarios that has caused the improvement in forecasting. 
At least that was my understanding of it. 

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Plus for short term forecasting the rain radar map is pretty good

[peds]

  On 12/04/2025 at 12:11, openspaceman said:

Plus for short term forecasting the rain radar map is pretty good

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We've timed our teabreaks to the rain radar before. Crack on for another hour then late lunch in the truck, instead of break at the usual time and climb in the rain.

 

Technology is bloody brilliant. 

[AHPP]

Well imagine how much better it’d be if the private sector was doing it.  

[Steven P]

BBC rain cloud radar is good for me, gives me best times to go out on the paddleboard, generally within 5 mins given an hour look ahead, or up on the hills (enough data hours ahead of time to give me an estimated best time for a dry sandwich stop).

 

Apart from that, hundreds of uses for accurate forecasting in the UK, I am surprised that in the US they have no need for accurate weather forecasts. Imagine with no forecasts, our next holiday "Excuse me hotel, what is the weather going to do today?" "It's going to be summer" "So does that mean rain jacket or shorts" "All we know is it is July so the weather will be summer"

 

Vodaphone are doing some interesting stuff - Midlands way I think - the signal between phone masts degrades when humidity levels rise, coordinating between masts can pin point rain showers more accurately than radar. News story was this week, I think they do the same in the Netherlands.

 

For the finances, Gareth suggests they spend 5 times more on forecasting? For a landmass 40 times larger than the UK? Sounds like they are doing well for the money.

 

As for private vs public.... private sounds good till you look at the UKs privatised companies for comparison and the awesome job they are doing. It is a feature that doesn't lend itself to monetising really, there are no big profits, so the big investments won't be there and the big finances won't be there to rip out the profits to shareholders

[GarethM]

No you dullard, I'm suggesting scrapping both.

It's a bloated waste that could be done for a 1/4 of what they spend.

 

You'll find the privates already do provide a lot of data, sencrop being a big one in the agricultural sector as we can't trust the met office as they are usually wrong.

[Steven P]

But one of their base models is provided by the UK Met Office.... so trusted or not?

[GarethM]

  On 12/04/2025 at 13:38, Steven P said:

But one of their base models is provided by the UK Met Office.... so trusted or not?

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And I think they're legally obligated to give the met office the data for free.

 

Which is real world data, not just a weather stations at the end of the runway.

 

As airport data is almost as pointless as those ones in built up towns, oh it's warm next to the concrete NSS or it's 5000c next to the shard.