Weather Accuracy?

Many of my friends will tell you one of my main moans are the TV and Internet weather forecasts. I’ve been christened “Met Check Mike” before now. Frankly the forecasts are getting less accurate now than they were a decade ago.

The problem seems to be that the forecasters are pandering to the whim of people in the middle of the cities who only need to know if they should take an umbrella or not.
What about those of us who work out in the elements regularly and often offshore where the weather forecast can be life or death?

Sure we have the Shipping Forecast which, to be fair, is pretty good most of the time, but when you’re working with people who don’t look at the shipping forecast and believe the benign forecasts we see on the TV and on the BBC weather website, it literally causes arguments because they see the light winds forecast and the weather they have inland and think it’s the same on the coast. I tell them the weather looks bad and a trip or work day might be cancelled and they think I’m mad!

My main problem these past two summers is that generally the Met Office are continually forecasting lighter winds than we are experiencing and this is nationwide, it’s not just a localised pattern. Maybe the pressure systems coming across the Atlantic are getting harder to read, but experienced charter skippers are seeing the potential in tight isobars for higher winds than the Met Office is forecasting and saving themselves grief from angry customers who may otherwise be told to travel and find the trip blown off. So too do many other good experienced angler’s, and this is without any modern scientific readouts to work from. It’s a decision taken from years of watching Atlantic depressions tracking across the Atlantic and judging what will happen from there.

The best TV forecast used to be the one on the BBC 1 Countryfile programme between 11am and 12pm on a Sunday. This has also become highly inaccurate at looking forward even a couple of days and is a big let down to farmers, sea goers and other outdoor working people who used to organise their lives around the show so as not to miss it.

My forecast for the next 24 hours is taken primarily from the Shipping Forecast and by checking any depression track and isobar pattern myself, then for a couple of days forward from the depressions tracking across the Atlantic in conjunction with the BBC Coastal & Inshore Waters forecast, which again to be fair are far more accurate with their wind strength prediction.

For longer range forecasts I ignore the BBC altogether and prefer to use  http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/index-forecast.asp? and add your postal code. This site looks as far ahead as 15 days and sometimes achieves 70% accuracy which is way better than the Beeb can over just 6 days between Countryfile programmes.

Another thing that hacks us off too on the coast is that ever since the big hurricane back in the 80’s the Met Office always seem to cover themselves and any half decent blow coming in off the Atlantic warrants a major weather warning with the “storm” passing through as nothing more than a typical gale. Talk about extremes!