please empty your brain below

One does wonder why the BBC changed to a provider that suggested 14 day predictions would/could be accurate and relied on when they knew that even 7 days couldn't be predicted with any certainty.

The weather for where I live is determined from a weather measuring/recording station only 4 miles away yet the "what is it doing NOW" icon is nearly always incorrect.

My theory is that the the weather forecasting people must work in buildings that don't have windows to to see what's really happening!
Where does the BBC take its weather forecast from now? Our Bureau of Meteorology only forecasts for seven days.

Answering my own question, MateoGroup. A minute of reading and it all sounds like a nightmare.
Ask a farmer. Much more accurate.
I use the Meteorological Office (Met Office) forecasts from their web site. Pity the BBC changed their weather forecast supplier.
Considering the numbers working from home, the weather forecast is likely to be warm and dry with occasional tea and biscuits.
It's worth saying that if the Met Office did 14 day forecasts they'd also be incorrect.

This isn't about who provides the forecast, just how far in advance you choose to believe it.
How good were the Met Office's forecasts for Dec25th once we got within their 7-day window?
2021 has been a horrible year for weather in London, alternating between spells of very wet weather and lengthy spells of nothing weather: dry but grey cloudy weather with only fleeting periods of sunshine. April and November were the only half decent months, however April was let down by being unusually cool.

I would not be surprised if 2021 turns out to be the least sunny year on record in London.

On the plus point 2022 is almost certain to have better weather, it can hardly fail not to have.
Whatever the weather my days always start with a little sunshine when I open the daily DG forecast 😃
I was looking forward to seeing the ISS (International Space Station) go by at a sensible early morning time on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. However, gloom intervened. I have seen it one summer night in the Polish countryside along with the Milky Way - I was starstruck!
Any forecast beyond 48hrs, I view with caution.
The Met Office use a number of prediction models to forecast the weather. So they look at the actual weather and then use the models to predict what it will be in the next period (e.g. 4 hours), so they have a few answers and use a weighted algorithm to produce a combined forecast from the models. For each answer they had for 4 hours, they plug that back into the models and get a lot more answers for 8 hours time. Rinse and repeat, and you get a tree like structure- a day ahead you get over a 100 forecasts, 2 days ahead tens of thousands, billions a few days ahead and so on. 7 day forecasts take some of the biggest computers in the world, but there isn't enough compute power in the world to do 14 days forecasts - anything over 7 days is just averages of the same day in previous years.
2021 was a miserable year for us sun-lovers. Plus the cold & wet May and cool but humid August wreaked havoc for the growing season!

I have both the BBC and the Met Office tabs open on my laptop and am usually amazed at how opposite their predictions can be - even for the day before! I tried to see if one was more accurate than the other, but it's really hit and miss - so now I mostly ignore both and look out the window!
It's not like I've had any weather-dependant plans for the last 2 years or anything!
The week before Christmas the Radio Four weather forecasts were saying that the models disagreed. So that indicated that a pinch of salt was required with the predictions.
I prefer the met office website; scroll down below the silly graphics to get a proper written forecast.
So when a newspaper headline (usually the Daily Express) screams at us that we're in for the hottest summer on record, there is no scientific basis for the claim - only the fact that six (or however many it was) of the last ten have been hot, so the probability is that the coming year will be hot as well.
Presumably 2021 didn't break any records for high temperature for the United Kingdom as a whole.
Up here the Met Office mountain weather forecast is the least inaccurate.

It did at least get the technical White Christmas (not much more than a dusting for the morning and a couple of inches overnight into Boxing Day) right for the Dales a couple of days out.
Why does the BBC spend our money obtaining forecasts from a supplier ? They should get it free from the Met Office as both the BBC and the Met Office are state-owned.

dg writes: A Thatcher govt decision in 1990.
I did some work for the Met Office maybe 20 years ago. A gloomy chap there said that if they simply stated that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's they would be right more often than the actual forecast. I'd like to think that is no longer the case.
Readers may enjoy the Met Office's regular 10 day trend series on YouTube, which give more technical detail into the forecast and an insight into the different uncertainties which may play out.
The 1990 decision was to make the Met Office a commercial enterprise, (the Ordnance Survey was another).

The BBC was required to put its weather forecasting provision out to tender in 2018, and the Met Office lost out to MeteoGroup, which is a private company with headquarters in the Netherlands but now owned by a US company.
Like all private weather forecasting companies, they rely on the various national government weather services for their data - only national governments can afford the supercomputers required to model the atmosphere. Moreover, the international treaties on exchange of meteorological data are made between governments - private companies get it second hand.
The Hampstead site has updated its sunshine records for December, so it's no longer the case that "the sun's only come out for two hours during the last three weeks".

But it is the case that the sun shone for less than half an hour during the previous two weeks, and that is exceptionally dull.










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