UKC

What current weather forecasts/apps do you find are usually accurate for Peak District weather forecasts? Accuracy around precipitation is particularly useful.  Cheers!

MWIS. Sorry, don't know how to insert a link

Windy. I’ve never had it rain when it wasn’t predicated, but I have been out in the dry when it’s predicated rain.. which seems like the best way round to me

met office for generalised View

and raintoday rain radar for more short notice tracking of showers etc - this is really useful on showery days, or watching a band of rain just miss the crags etc 

Give this a go.

https://www.accuweather.com/

For any upland areas in the UK you wont get better than MWIS and/or the met office mountain area forecast. They are a synthesis provided by actual human beings, not just computer generated. And its always best to use more than one forecast and look for similarities and differences and make your plans based on what the different models agree on. 

A point in general, 'app' style icon forecasts (where you get a little symbol of rain/sun/cloud etc for regular time intervals) are next to useless unless you know the bigger picture. You need to know if there is a front approaching or if it is just random showers, and if its showers, are they convection or orographic etc etc. you can get none of this from a bunch of icons on a screen.

sorry but thats a classic example of a bad forecast to use (except for the live rainfall radar). just a bunch of computer generated icons with no synthesis or bigger picture.

I mainly use the Weather Radar on the Windy app (or windy.com) to track the 'actual' incoming rain.

I've never had a problem with the BBC.  Like all forecasts,  you need to calibrate your reality with precipitation probability numbers but once you have that, it seems pretty good across the country.  I think the mistake many people make is just to look at the little cloud symbols rather than read the precipitation probability, wind speed and wind direction.

Also worth checking a few local forecasts across the Peak to get a feel for the localness of any weather.

I disagree. I've used it loads to times for going out during gaps between showers. I don't need a bigger picture for tomorrow or a hundred miles away, I want to know what's happening locally in the near future.

Have you actually used it? You don't seem familiar with it as you don't mention the weather radar extrapolation/prediction into the future rather than the live picture. The "Minutecast" shows the same data for a single location and the few words of text alone (currently "No precipitation for at least 120 min" rather than "Heavy rain starting in 36 minutes") is a big enough picture for two hours at my location.

When "Accuracy around precipitation is particularly useful" it's the best I know of.

I used to use weather radar and extrapolate for when gaps in showers would arrive but accuweather does that for me pretty reliably.

On the subject of rainfall radar, the Met Office rainfall radar map on their app is really good - same data but much better presented than on their website.

What are your expectations in terms of accuracy?

Some weather systems are easier to forecast than others and predicting more than a couple of days ahead could be a guessing game, especially if its an unsettled, unpedictable system.

I think there are times when any of the outlets can do a reasonable forecast, times where none of them stand much chance, and the closer to the time you're wanting the forecast for is the best chance of accuracy.

My approach is to usually only bother even looking at a forecast 3 days ahead, starting to believe it 2 days ahead or not at all if the system is chaotic. Compare a few forecasts to see if they concur.  Usually do MWIS for an overview of the whole mountain area and mountain specific detail, and Met Office to see if it lines up with whats predicted for the nearest village. Rain radar/system progression images on met office or Windy to get a feel for whether the system looks settled or unsettled to decide on how much I trust the forecast.

The Met Office App & Data looks rubbish compared with this:

https://www.windy.com/-Weather-radar-radar?radar,52.397,-1.011,8

(looks the same in the Windy phone App)

Windy give weather and radar data from all over the world as well. And gives a lightning feed - phone vibrates with every strike!

That certainly is pretty.  I just use the rainfall radar to tell me whether I'm going to get wet in the relatively near future though, so clarity is more important to me than geeking out on a ton of data.  I'm not usually that interested in radar data from all over the world at the time, and I find my whole body vibrates if there's a lightning strike nearby so it's a bit academic whether my phone does too!

I know some sea kayakers who swear by Windy.  Windfinder and XC Weather are also popular.  Personally I prefer windguru.cz for wind and swell forecasts when I'm at the coast, but the OP was specifically asking about the Peak and I don't use it much for forecasts closer to home.

I find the best approach is to review three separate reputable forecasts and take the average. You'll find after time some are conservative and some are optimistic. 

I use Met Office, BBC Weather and MWIS. 

Awesome, that's a great site to have bookmarked, cheers

That's a good question.  Today it's working out how feasible it is to make the journey to the Peak this weekend, will take us a good 4 hours to get there, so don't want to be rained off. We'll need to book a campsite, so the sooner we know we're going, the better.

Nice local website for local people

Buxton Weather – Live Weather in Buxton Derbyshire, UK

www.buxtonweather.co.uk

I use met office for the Peak. Got a 24hr forecast map and current precip radar map to use alongside the location based forecasts. High Neb on the met office gives a good high level forecast for high eastern grit edges, which can be quite different to hathersage in the valley for example. Kinder Low gives a good higher altitude forecast for the western grit edges, which is normally a lot more pessimistic than manchester etc.

I can currently report that there are biblical levels of rain in the Hope Valley (Peak).

Blimey, its bucketing it down..

this is the accurate reporting I need! I'll keep an eye on conditions over the next two days and decide if it's been good enough to dry things out

I'm trying to make much the same decision and it does seem that there isn't a very distinct pressure system in play so its all rather uncertain still.

Another thing I look at when the forecast is either bouncing around or unclear is the inter-model comparison on meteo-blue:

https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/multimodel/hathersage_united-...

Which I'm afraid doesn't look so encouraging for the peak district...

It was bucketing down in Nottingham yesterday.  But I was impressed by the accurate Met office forecast that it would be dry in the Hope Valley for the Castleton Fell Race.  Very glad I went.

Nice!  A fair bit of data represented on that

Although that is pretty much what the Met Office forecast already does, being an ensemble of various different models.

I use a combination of MWIS, Metcheck.com and the Met Office.

I tend to use the websites rather than the apps. I find the mobile apps tend to be overly simplified and lack the ability to get more detailed information.

It turns out that every forecasting source I checked for Bamford got it wrong for Saturday PM; plenty sunshine, no sign at all of the forecast rain and so glad we decided to risk it and get our first Peak visit in since 2019

On the plus side, I now have a lot more forecasting apps to cross check

Up here near Shap we had the opposite: all week we had been forecast rain but enjoyed sunshine. Then managed to get some good soakings over the weekend while out and about in the lakes. Seemed very isolated though, one of those peculiar systems that defies forecasting! Pleased it stayed dry for you and you got a good trip in.