UKC

The BBC has given The Met its marching orders.

Bit surprised at this.

In reply to Indy:

I'm really surprised. The met seemed really good to me, bit of a shame that.

In reply to Indy:

I'm not surprised. It's been a f%cking awful Summer, far too much rain.......

In reply to Indy:

Disappointing to hear. Absolutely creased up at the daily mail's headline though:
"Met Office fury as BBC 'gives contract worth millions to foreigners'".

In reply to Indy: No it hasn't, if I read this correctly.

The BBC has invited tenders for the contract to supply weather forecasts. The Met Office will only be given their marching orders if someone else wins that tender. Whilst I have great respect for the Met Office, as a taxpayer and licence-fee payer I expect maximum value for what I pay and opening up a service like this to competitive tender seems perfectly logical.

And I'm not a Conservative voter, despite what all that sounds like.

T.

In reply to Indy:

Mm, maybe someone in the Beeb has had a few weekends down to Cornwall planned like this last one.

Forecast at 11pm Friday. Torrential rain all day Saturday.
Saturday, blazing sunshine and blue sky all day.
Forecast at midnight on Saturday. Rain all day on Sunday until late afternoon.
You guessed it, blazing sunshine again and clear blue skies.
This has happened several times this summer.

My suspicion is someone in the met office in Exeter wanted quiet beaches for a bit of surfing or family outing. Lovely for them, lovely for us who live here but the Cornish tourist board is ready to march to Exeter and burn the met office to the ground.

Cheers

Toby

I'm not surprised at this - unless the forecast is dead stable the recent bbc forecast have been little more than a coin flip for me. By comparision the Norwegian forecast has been spot on and MWIS has been very good. I can't tell if the underlying model has been dodgy or just they way the forecast as presented has been extracted from the model but it has been very poor of late.

In reply to Indy:

Well , I dont rate the mets website anymore.....

In reply to Indy:
BBC weather has been pretty good for me this summer. 80-90% accuracy up and down England. This weekends weather has been spot on locally even down to afternoon showers etc...

In reply to Indy:
Didn't the government commit a lot of money fairly recently to buy the met office a big new supercomputer, or did I just imagine it? If this is the case, then arguments about getting value for taxpayers' money tare irrelevant, as both BBC and Metoffice are largely essentially government institutions. To spend additional money with a separate commercial organization would be stupid if looked at from a broader perspective (ie whole-UK finances rather than just BBC finances).

Also, if the met office is the best forecaster (perhaps if not now, then once it has its new supercomputer!) then it makes sense to make it available on the format/programmes that most people use/view. I expect accurate weather forecasting is worth a lot more to the economy than the met charges the bbc?

In reply to Indy:

Does that mean no more Carole Kirkwood ??

In reply to arch:


I for one will miss her warm front.

In reply to Indy:
If they ditch the Met Office who is the most likely contender to take over?

In reply to sbc_10:

Scottish weather girls are where it's at.

Most of you won't have seen Judith Ralston ,who does the Scotch BBC weather.

But the real winner is Anne Lundon (nee Morrison) on BBC Alba.

In reply to andymac:

Phoar....scorchio !!

In reply to Indy:

Mrs Num Num would be a good choice of weather girl if thunder were forecast.

In reply to birdie num num:


I'm getting this vision of Les Dawson as Ada.

In reply to Indy:

So the govt cuts the BBC funding, and as a result the BBC has to save money by buying cheap, and foreign. False economy from the govt, but that's the free market, allegedly.

Anyone noticed the BBCs coverage of the world athletics- very few staff in Beijing, and those there (Brendon foster and Paula Radcliffe) having to share a microphone!

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Yes, and I suspect the other factor is that the Met Office have been told to gain as much comercial funding as possible. So there's a tug-of-war with the BBC ordered to cut expenditure and the Met Office ordered to increase income. Result: tax and licence fees money goes to a foreign organisation - most likely a state funded organisation, the foreign equivalent to the Met Office. So the BBC will end up subsidising another countries weather forecasts. Great value for money.

In reply to andymac:



It's only Scotch if you can eat it, drink it or mend your underpants with it ... oh wait.

In reply to duchessofmalfi:


Not my experience. For us the local (Ipstones or Leek) BBC forecast from the met office is usually right to within an hour.

This smacks of BBC management being over-keen to show they are making savings. The Met Office is a national asset and its forecasting is world class. It's also a government agency through the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (and odd place for it, admittedly) so it seems odd for a our national broadcaster not to use our national forecasting agency.

There's also a political dimension. The Met Office is perceived as being too vocal about climate change by the deniers of right wing of the Conservative party, the sort of people who also tend to be pretty hostile to the BBC generally.

In reply to andymac:

Gillian Smart is where my desires lie. I can see the authoratitive appeal Judith has for some people though.

Must look out for Anne Lundon.

In reply to Toby_W:

"the Cornish tourist board is ready to march to Exeter and burn the met office to the ground"



They should take an umbrella, I've read it will be raining on Saturday ;0)

In reply to Greasy Prusiks:


Hmmm - not so sure. I was planning for a weekend of continuous rain on Friday. We ended up having two beautiful days of sunshine. Given that the Met Office reckon they can get about 90% accuracy within 24 hours, they were miles off. I reckon the BBC would do better to employ a knarly old man with a flat cap who sniffs the wind in order to determine an accurate weather forecast. I am finding the forecast much more unreliable now it is so precise compared to the days of dodgy Velcro stickers.

In reply to andymac:

.....Judith Ralston...probably the hottest bit of totty on TV....love that slightly dishevelled , dragged through a hedge backwards look.....with the straining button......

Sorry.....got carried away there.....

ANdy

In reply to Indy:

I use WeatherPro app. Paid. It's genuinely amazing - uses German data I think.

In reply to Indy:

I stopped watching and trusting BBC weather forecasts roughly 10 years ago as I was fed up with its negative forecasts predicting doom, gloom and disaster.

I regularly held off on trips away on the advice of the BBC Warnings while my mates ignored this advice. They always returned with stories of perfect weather and photos to back this all up.

In the end I put my trust in Accuweather and have never regretted this decision once.

How come Accueweather can predict weather changes with a couple of hours accuracy and the BBC can't?

We British, and I say this as a generalisation, think that all our State Run services like the Meteorological Office are the best in the world, without knowing or realising that there are alternatives to gauge them by.

I'm betting that many on this site, who own a smartphone or tablet have at least one Weather App on it. How many of those apps are not powered by the MET Office I wonder?

In reply to zebidee:


Nah:

Poem: On A Scotch Bard, Gone To The West Indies - Robert Burns

Just one of hundreds of times he uses "Scotch" to mean a Scottish person!

In reply to The Lemming:

I use Accuweather as it's the integrated app on my HTC phone. I assumed it would be rubbish, so initially only used it to check general temperatures etc.

As you say, it seems to have forecasts nailed down to the hour in many places, and is often much more accurate than the BBC.

Others tell me that the Met Office forecasting is very good, but I find the website a total pain to use.

In reply to Andrew Mallinson:




The straining button?

Any time I see her ,it's the straining everything.

Bravo Judith.

In reply to andymac:

She looks like a cross between Sarah Palin and Nana Mouskouri! Fine if you like that sort of thing...