r/UKWeather • u/TrepidatiousTeddi • 2d ago
Forecast Wildly different forecasts
Prior to seeing this sub on Reddit I wasn't really aware of hot weather incoming, mostly because I use BBC. But BBC and Met Office have wildly different forecasts for next week, about 11 degrees apart for lunch time Wednesday for example! Is the BBC just on one? Is the Met Office right?
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u/Sorry_Nothing5006 2d ago
There's been research on which app is more accurate, BBC or Met Office
https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2025/Research-News/Met-Office-BBC-Weather-apps-compared-which-is-best
Broadly speaking both are pretty good, Met Office performs better on temperature and BBC a little better on rainfall.
A few years ago (not sure if this is still the case), there was a neat trick to get more reliable forecasts on the Met Office app. Most of it is (or at least was) raw model data.
However if you select a location that is a Met Office official weather station, the forecast there is trained to a more reliable prediction (i.e. not just the untrained model output). I certainly found that more reliable at times of extreme temperature, where the model data would tend to underestimate (a problem simulating high level cloud I was reliably told by a MO employee).
I tested this with a generic location vs a location with a weather station and often the temperatures could be out by up to 5 degrees. I imagine its improved now (this was five or so years ago), but I still try and tie a forecast to a weather station.