Jump to content
IGNORED

The White Stuff


The Casual Connoisseur

Recommended Posts

The BBC weather centre is run by the Met Office. The forecasters you see on national BBC TV (and some of the local ones too) are trained metreologists - with scientific backgrounds.

The Met is the agency which owns all the weather satellites, local weather monitoring centres and other hi-tech equipment.

Other weather service providers simply use the Met's data and present it via ex-Met office meteorologists.

Forecasting is an inexact science but when - a few years back - I was charged by an employer with sourcing reliable weather statistics I found that the BBC site beat various commercial rivals when subjected to a thorough analysis. As it should - it is much more comprehensive.

Not so. Carol kirkwood for one did not get into weather forecasting by that route. In fact I seem to recall that John Kettley decided not to front the Beeb forecasts anymore because they were not using qualified meteorologists.

Anyway they are not really very good at what they do. I suggest that the local ones look out of the window before going on air. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not so. Carol kirkwood for one did not get into weather forecasting by that route. In fact I seem to recall that John Kettley decided not to front the Beeb forecasts anymore because they were not using qualified meteorologists.

Yes, there's a bit of a power struggle going on between the Met Office and BBC Weather ATM. It is not a happy place.

I should've said the majority of national forecasters are meteorologists. They used to all be, until someone decided that some non-meteorologists made better presenters. Meteorologists actually prepare the forecasts though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I did know that Chip, but I was trying to keep the discussion simplified. :whistle2:

As you say, Met Office data is as good as any. I did my analysis about three years ago, but a retrospective accuracy check (more difficult to do then it seems) put Met Office just above Meteogroup by about 0.25% (from memory).

I'm not a meteorologist BTW - I just know a few.

I was just clarifying what you'd said for the rest!

I'm not a meteorologist either, did a bit back in the day at university but need to have a working knowledge of pressure systems for work. The worst for it IMO is netweather; the model outputs and forums are really useful, but I think the forecasts are amalgamations of all the forecasts by the users of te website and therefore almost always wrong

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...