In message , Norman Lynagh
writes
wrote:

I know this has been raised before but it is driving me to
distraction. I am referring to the discrepancies between the met
office regional text forecasts and the local graphical forecasts. I
can understand small differences but half the time they are so
completely different as to make the site useless. This has been a
running sore for as long as I can remember. It is particularly absurd
for south east England which has little local variation and so even
less excuse for such grotesquely large discrepancies. Infuriating.
Just to take a small example, I am trying to plan which day to work
on our allotment. Text forecast for Saturday “mainly sunny”.
Graphical forecast for Hampstead cloud icons all day and not a single
sun icon. Hopeless.

I know the feeling, David! Regional text forecasts are generated by
human forecasters. The site-specific forecasts are computer-generated
with no human input i.e. they are raw computer output which, in my
opinion, is not sufficiently reliable to be offered as end-user
material. In other words they are not fit for purpose.


Where they do sometimes score over the human-generated forecast is for
the next few hours, presumably because the computer forecasts are being
frequently updated but the human-generated ones are only updated two or
three times a day.
--
John Hall
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless
information."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)