I tend to use both www.metoffice.gov.uk and www.accuweather.com for weather forecast. Sometimes, I find the latter better than the former. As I write this, at 11:45am on 10/7/17, I have just taken two screen shots, one at 11:37 of MetOffice and the other a minute later from AccuWeather. Their forecasts for tomorrow is different. I wonder which will turn out to be more accurate. With less than 24 hours to go before my morning ride, I’m hoping AccuWeather is correct.
Which forecast sites do you use? Do you find that some are better at long range forecasts (say 48-72 hours plus) than others?
I’ve found Metcheck.com to be extremely accurate. Almost to the point of frustration as if it says rain you can’t kid yourself and think, “maybe it’s wrong.” I’ve never found it to be wrong when you are looking 24 hours ahead.
It’s great to just slide the day/time slider at the bottom to quickly gauge if they’ll be rain at a particularly location of your days riding. it soon becomes obvious where they predict the rain to hit and which way it’s going etc. Perfect if you’re planning a long route, don’t need to faff about checking forecast at different locations along it.
Map view on metoffice is my preferred too, with rainfall filter. Good for short term forecast
For longer term, I rely on BBC, which I’ve found quite good. My phone also has widget from Google which shows forecasts from weather.com. That one was very accurate in Siberia and can be good here… on occasion it has got things right when BBC got them wrong but, then again I find BBC accurate most times.
To be honest, in England it’s quite a fickle business forecasting…
If you are going to compare, you need to use the same locations. Your screenshots are for Enfield with the Met Office and the City of London for AccuWeather.
London is plenty big enough for it to rain in Enfield but not in central London. Plenty of times I have been watching cricket on TV when it stopped for rain at Lord’s but was, and stayed, fine here. I have even seen rain at the Oval which we never got, which is less than four miles away.
I do not know what weather station they use for Enfield, but if I use “Streatham” as a location a lot of services give the forecast for Biggin Hill. This gives a slightly different and usually less accurate forecast to using “London”. Not surprising when you are comparing an urban part of inner London with a semi-rural location near the top the North Downs.
But I use the Met Office site for the map view as well, I just wish they would put all the maps back in their new iOS app too.
People I work with often use this Norwegian site - they speak very highly of it. Never quite understood why it would be more accurate than the Met Office though. https://www.yr.no/place/United_Kingdom/England/London/
Don’t all the weather channels get their informatioon from The Met Office?
Besides aren’t the two forecasts you show for different areas (City of London and Enfield)?
For 100% accuracy use the hanging stone method
If the stone is wet it’s raining.
If the stone is swinging it’s windy. If the stone casts a shadow it’s sunny. If the stone does not cast a shadow and is not wet it’s cloudy. If the stone is not visible it’s foggy. If the stone is white it’s snowing. If the stone is coated with ice there is a frost. If the ice is thick it’s a heavy frost. If the stone is bouncing there is an earthquake. If the stone is under water there is a flood.
Lol. My favourite subject at the moment. Not the BBC let’s just say that. They had me in a panic yesterday. Downloaded this yesterday and prefer the look of their forecasts so this is the one I currently rate!
ITV and S4C use the Met Office. As do Channel 5, after switching last autumn from the Weather Company, the company behind the U.S. Weather Channel that is now owned by IBM.
