Seeking Expert Advice

[poliphilo]

 We need to get ourselves down to the Meeting House this morning. There's light rain at present and I want to know whether walking will be unpleasant so I call up a weather forecast. The site has a map with digitalised weather systems jerking across it. The sea is blue (of course) so they need to have a different colour for the weather systems- and they've gone with green. It's like ragged clouds of poison gas are drifting over Europe. 

The map doesn't show any clouds over us- but I look out my window and something is blocking out the sun. The site hosts various conflicting opinions. In one place it says rain will stop at 10.45. In another place it says expect rain all morning.

Even as I write the rain stops and the cloud cover lightens.

Oh, we'll walk...

Comments

[mtbc]

Yeah, I've been surprised at how online weather information clearly differs from what I presently observe. Rain/cloud cover, at least up here, is a particular case in that it's not too hard to find major websites that disagree substantially with each other.

Reminds me of a friend in NYC who observes that what one of the local television weather people seems to really need is … a window, because what they'd see out of it would give the lie to what they're saying.

[heleninwales]

I rely on the Met Office app on my mobile phone. It's pretty good, though obviously not infallible. But the Met forecast plus popping my head out of the back door and assessing the sky towards the west is good enough most days.

[cmcmck]

The hill country and the Severn Gorge right on our doorstep can make weather forecasts rather unreliable but like Helen, a look to the west over said hills and Gorge into Wales often gives a clue.

[poliphilo]

I like that line about the window. :)

[poliphilo]

Today's forecast wasn't too far out. We got more sunshine than predicted, but rain turned up around 4 o'clock as the app said it would.

[poliphilo]

We have the South Downs- and it's often the case that the weather on our side is different from the weather on the other side...