First post here. Apologies if it's OT, but couldn't quickly find an
obviously more appropriate newsgroup.

Packing for a short trip to Budapest, I was surprised at the wide
variations I got from the two weather sites I use most, BBC and
Accuweather, displayed at about 07:00 today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.sh...rld=0059&links
http://www.accuweather.com/world-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=0&locCod e=EUR|HU|HU006|BUDAPEST&metric=1
There are enormous differences in the daily max temperatures (C):

Sat Sun Mon Tue
BBC: 10 9 10 13
Accu: 7 6 5 5

Which (if either) of these is likely to be reasonably accurate please?
Is this sort of variation common? If so it damages my confidence in
future checks.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message
...
Packing for a short trip to Budapest, I was surprised at the wide
variations I got from the two weather sites I use most, BBC and
Accuweather, displayed at about 07:00 today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.sh...rld=0059&links
http://www.accuweather.com/world-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=0&locCod e=EUR|HU|HU006|BUDAPEST&metric=1
There are enormous differences in the daily max temperatures (C):

Sat Sun Mon Tue
BBC: 10 9 10 13
Accu: 7 6 5 5

Which (if either) of these is likely to be reasonably accurate
please?
Is this sort of variation common? If so it damages my confidence in
future checks.

.... don't use 'second-hand' sites for this purpose.

If possible, go to the host web site of the National Meteorological
Service of the country you are visiting. Even if there is no English
version, it's usually possible to work out what the forecast is.

You can find the countries from this link (sponsored by WMO)

http://www.worldweather.org/

and for Hungary specifically, you can go direct to the web site of the
Hungarian Met.Service at:-

http://www.met.hu/omsz.php

Martin.
--
Martin Rowley
E:
W: booty.org.uk

"Martin Rowley" wrote:

"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message
.. .
Packing for a short trip to Budapest, I was surprised at the wide
variations I got from the two weather sites I use most, BBC and
Accuweather, displayed at about 07:00 today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.sh...rld=0059&links
http://www.accuweather.com/world-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=0&locCod e=EUR|HU|HU006|BUDAPEST&metric=1
There are enormous differences in the daily max temperatures (C):

Sat Sun Mon Tue
BBC: 10 9 10 13
Accu: 7 6 5 5

Which (if either) of these is likely to be reasonably accurate
please?
Is this sort of variation common? If so it damages my confidence in
future checks.

... don't use 'second-hand' sites for this purpose.

If possible, go to the host web site of the National Meteorological
Service of the country you are visiting. Even if there is no English
version, it's usually possible to work out what the forecast is.

You can find the countries from this link (sponsored by WMO)

http://www.worldweather.org/

and for Hungary specifically, you can go direct to the web site of the
Hungarian Met.Service at:-

http://www.met.hu/omsz.php

Martin.

Thanks Martin, appreciate the advice. That Hungarian site's forecast
gives a third set of temps, although they are much closer to BBC's
than to Accuweather's. I wonder how the latter can get it so wrong?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message
...

Thanks Martin, appreciate the advice. That Hungarian site's forecast
gives a third set of temps, although they are much closer to BBC's
than to Accuweather's. I wonder how the latter can get it so wrong?


.... we won't be able to tell who is 'right' and who is 'wrong' until
after the event of course. The problem with *many* of these
model-driven sites is that they often use global models (designed to
cope with the broadscale features across the entire planet) and
regression routines to implicitly forecast the temperatures at local
ground level, derived from a model variable that is not necessarily
representative of the local topography / surface type. A better
technique is to use such models to power a local site-specific
statistically updated model which then becomes (properly formulated)
'tuned' to the local conditions and explicitly forecasts the local
'screen' (roughly 1.5m) temperature.

If you go to the national site, you are more likely to pick up such
output; if you use someone like the BBC (in fact taken from the Met
Office global model) or AccuWeather (probably based on NCEP though I'm
not sure of that), then we're dealing with global model stuff which
may or may not be correct.

Martin.


--
Martin Rowley
E:
W: booty.org.uk