What is the most accurate weather app or site for the UK?

[MKHACHFE]

Hi all,

I used to use Clear Outside most of the time, but i find its info the last year or so to be pretty much wildly wrong. The met office and the BBC have totally different predictions for the next night and i find it baffling how they can both be wrong most of the time and also contradict each other. Case in point, both said totally clear skies for Wed night in Biggin Hill, Greater London. 

So, at 6pm, i took my time, set up my gear, guide scope and cam, planned everything in order to image M51 and lo and behold, the skies were pretty much covered in cloud till past midnight and then still too cloudy.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a ranting post, just one to ask for what your wonderful folk consider to be the most accurate weather apps/sites?

And yes, i am 100% aware of the difficulty in predicting the weather. 

 

Thanks for reading this

[Jiggy 67]

I have also lost faith in Clear Outside. I have four different apps and the best I would say is Ventusky 

[TerryMcK]

ScopeNights I have found the best. The developer is working on an update as recently a weather provider he used stopped providing updates but that just affects non UK and USA users. It comes up with an error when starting but still uses other providers for UK/USA forecasts.

I still find it reliable. Only works on Apple devices as far as I know. I don’t use Android so not sure if it in that store.

[PeterCPC]

The words "accuracy" and "weather forecast" do not go together in my experience.

[Mr Spock]

At the moment CO is showing 40% high cloud changing to 55% at 08:00. I look outside and see clear blue sky all around...

[Chefgage]

I use clear outside and xc weather. I then compare the two and if they both say clear skies for tonight then I would say most of the time I am good to go. Although often one will say lots of cloud and the other no cloud. I find out the two xc weather to be the most accurate but does not give the detailed information that clear outside does.

[The Admiral]

I don't find any of them good at predicting, and in some cases, even agreeing with what the conditions are currently! I think the best you can do is to look at satellite views of the clouds, though that doesn't help deciding whether to set up in advance.

The weather in the UK is very complicated and notoriously difficult to predict, and different weather models usually give widely differing results. See for example https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/multimodelensemble/oxford_united-kingdom_2640729

Ian

[Stu]

I rarely use weather apps any more, but tend to rely on my own predictions using Sat24. You can generally make a judgement based on thickness and direction of cloud movements which is reasonably accurate. The IR maps are harder to interpret but still possible.

Last might all the forecasts were showing as cloudy until after midnight, yet I had some very nice skies through until 11pm when I packed in.

https://en.sat24.com/en

[Clarkey]

There was a similar post to this question recently and my answer is the same. I look at BBC, Met office, Metcheck and clear outside and take an average. I then ignore this and look outside!

More seriously, I find the Met office forecast best for where I live - but it is far from perfect. As I live between multiple areas of high ground, predicting the weather is always a challenge.

[Roy Challen]

Stick my head out the door. Never fails.

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

I've settled on this free app for now. 

https://www.weatherandradar.co.uk/apps/

Clear Outside is used as a comparison app rather than primary.

[banjaxed]

All the weather forecasters are at the mercy of Mother Nature and NOBODY can predict what she will do.

[Laurieast]

Met office satellite, and look out the window.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/observation/map/gcrjvn1zm#?zoom=5&lat=53.08&lon=-1.18&map=SatelliteVis&fcTime=1618431300

Met office forecast is ok ish, sometimes.

[gajjer]

I look at Clear Outside first, but I have found it to be quite wrong a few times just recently. If it agrees with BBC weather then I am inclined to believe it. But I also look at Sat24 taking the overall Europe view and then the UK & Ireland for a close up. The more you look at the satellite images, the more you realise how difficult it must be to predict. I can't remember what day it was but there was a cloud formation coming down the UK and as it hit land it seemed to dissipate and we had a reasonably clear night. But on another occasion the clouds seemed to appear as the air moved over the UK. Sad to say I didn't take much notice in geography being more interested in a young lady a couple of desks from me, otherwise I would know what the heck was going on.

The way I look at it is, if I set up and it turns bad, it was all useful practice on setting up. We get precious few good nights so it's better to set up than not to.

As you say, it's difficult to predict the weather and we shouldn't blame the weather men when it goes wrong.

cheers

gaj

[tuckstar]

I'm another fan of sat24. Use met office, met check and co, but always a final check on sat24.

Edited April 15, 2021 by tuckstar

[Second Time Around]

I use the following:

 

Clear Outside

Metcheck (the astro forecast is in the hobbies section and includes seeing and transparency)

Meteoblue (the astro forecast is in the outdoor & sports section of the forecasts and includes seeing)

Weather Underground 

Met Office

BBC

I also use the satellite cloud photos that on Metcheck are also in infrared so show cloud at night.  

 

Since the beginning of April I've set up a spreadsheet to roughly compare the cloudiness accuracy of these 6 sites.  I intend posting the data after the end of each month.

[Waddensky]

Most stargazing forecast apps, including mine, use a single weather model as source. It's usually best to use these alongside other sources of weather data, preferably as 'local' (high resolution) as possible. There are convenient websites that allow you compare several weather models at a glance, such as this one. This will give you an idea to what extent the models are in agreement.

[chrispj]

@Waddensky Thanks for posting the meteoblue link, I didn't know there were any sites comparing the models, it will be really useful!

 

For the OP, one that hasn't been mentioned, I find windy.com to be the forecast I go to most, the site (& apps) have some very nice presentation with good information. The meteogram option with the cloud details will probably be of most use here.

[Dave61]

The best all round weather app for me is Ventusky, have it on my Mac and Iphone.

[Zermelo]

13 hours ago, Jiggy 67 said:

I have four different apps and the best I would say is Ventusky 

I read that the app charges for features that the web site includes for free (like cloud cover).

But I can't get the web site to display properly on Firefox (which I use), though it does on Edge (which I hate).

Does anyone use Ventusky with Firefox?

[Shimrod]

I look at cloud cover and direction of movement on   https://meteoradar.co.uk/satellite-rainradar 

You do have to look before it gets dark as as nighttime arrives it no longer shows any cloud images.       

[Second Time Around]

11 minutes ago, Shimrod said:

I look at cloud cover and direction of movement on   https://meteoradar.co.uk/satellite-rainradar 

You do have to look before it gets dark as as nighttime arrives it no longer shows any cloud images.       

I agree.  Meteoradar's daytime satellite cloud forecast is the best I've seen.  I use it a lot for solar.

[Dean Hale]

+1 for Ventusky too. One of the few apps i've actually paid for.

[Thorney]

I mainly use an app called ‘Sky Live’ then I’ll check Clear Out Side and Apple weather to compare. I will always end up going back to Sky Live as it seems to be the most accurate. 

[Dezerker]

On 15/04/2021 at 02:45, MKHACHFE said:

...pretty much wildly wrong. The met office and the BBC have totally different predictions for the next night and i find it baffling how they can both be wrong most of the time and also contradict each other.

Oh I hear you and feel your pain on this!  I headed off to a dark sky site near Dartmoor recently as a number of weather sites said "no doubt - clear skies all the way"...it started hailing / snowing at 1am and continued to so so intermittently (with full cloud cover) until I left at around 9am...how the algorithms (or is it humans, still?) interpreting satellite images can't spot a bank of cloud that size is beyond me...I recognise cloud can move faster / slower than they expect. but what frustrates me is they don't seem to update when they're wrong.  Even at 7am they were all still saying "yup, clear skies til midday"...Grrrr. 

And all this last week (including for tonight), BBC, Metcheck and Clear Outside are disagreeing with each other.  Very grateful to everyone suggesting alternatives.  My phone will soon be filled with weather apps, and I'll continue to do what I do now, which is take the average of several sites and see how it looks!!

All of that said, in recognising the difficulties forecasters face, I noticed that while we've had a relatively stable, high pressure over the UK recently, the wind speeds higher up in the atmosphere have been quite fast, so I'm guessing that can change things and bring different weather than was expected at shorter notice?