[Dolly]

After some investigation last year I bought a subscription to Windy which is about to expire but it's just not that accurate. Despite having a range of data sets/models to choose from (I choose lots to try and ensure a more accurate forecast) it was just wrong too much of the time. Not a great UI/UX as well.
What does anyone else use or recommend ?
I don't mind paying as long as it's worth it


Forecast me up

[Bradders]

Met Office

[Johnny Brown]

Ditto.

Plus Home and Dry for the best radar, and Sat 24 for satellite.

Final step is to bookmark a few webcams.

[SA Chris]

WTForecast (for comedy value). Actually aside from the comedy it's quite a good.

I use met office plus Yr

[mrjonathanr]

I use met office plus Yr

+1

[battery]

It's a combination in our house, that involves looking around met office, BBC, windy and meteoblue which normally gives you a good sense of what it's doing and how reliable that information is/how accurate the forecasts are. Throw into that some webcams and you've got a good half hour of studying before heading out!

[Fultonius]

After some investigation last year I bought a subscription to Windy which is about to expire but it's just not that accurate. Despite having a range of data sets/models to choose from (I choose lots to try and ensure a more accurate forecast) it was just wrong too much of the time. Not a great UI/UX as well.
What does anyone else use or recommend ?

I'm intrigued that you bothered paying for Windy - did you find it was any better than the basic version?

I still mainly use Windy for a quick check, but have started to use MetOffice a bit more recently off the back of learning a bit more about how the various models work etc. I'd say my feeling is that the basic ECMWF model on windy slightly over-predicts rain but it's still pretty handy for its comparison feature and I like the meteograms.

I actually really like Windy's UI vs MetOffice, which, despite having a new "beta" version is still far too dumbed down and generalised for my liking.

Ultimately, the top models still only predict precipitation correctly around 75 to 80% of the time, and human's are great at biasing for those times the forecast is wrong, so we'll probably always feel the forecasts are shit.

Edited to say - the MetOffice app is actually much better than I'd realised!  I'd always just used it on my laptop and thought it was pretty gash, but the android app actually seems much nicer. I'll try that for a while and see.

[sxrxg]

Met Office typically gets used for rain radar, especailly now as they have extend the maps out to forecast 5 days instead of just the next 12 hours.

Also use Ventusky for rain radar and wind direction combined in a nice visual, good to work out where might be drying/sheltered.

Finally i realy like the meteograms on the meteoblue app, the multimodel visual gives an idea when the models start to diverge allowing you to have confidence in the predictibility ratings given to the forecast.

[GazM]

I'm surprised anyone would pay for a forecast. I've never even heard of Windy. What does it provide that you couldn't get anywhere else? A forecast would need to be 100% accurate for me to consider paying!

Met office App, bbc weather page and MWIS seem to be enough for me to get an idea of whats likely to happen.

[lagerstarfish]

I use WhatsApp

messaging various retired and semi retired climbing obsessed friends

[Fultonius]

I'm surprised anyone would pay for a forecast. I've never even heard of Windy. What does it provide that you couldn't get anywhere else? A forecast would need to be 100% accurate for me to consider paying!

Met office App, bbc weather page and MWIS seem to be enough for me to get an idea of whats likely to happen.

Basic Windy is free, paid version gets you higher resolution and hourly instead of 4 hourly updates. Try the free app, it's pretty good.

[Blue Boy]

Funnily enough I almost made this thread myself yesterday. I was going to rave about the Met Office App's update to their radar feature.

It now operates in 15 minute intervals which has been a bit of a game changer in terms of accurately choosing which crag to go to, as well as when to arrive/leave.

Managed to time leaving Birchen the other day to the minute, only getting caught in the rain in the final 100m back to the car, meaning the entire weather window was well spent.

[Dolly]

Thanks for all replies. I didn’t realise the MO app had a radar feature

[TobyD]

I used to have two friends who worked in modelling for the met office, their opinion was that looking endlessly at forecasts is a waste of time, one quick look is fine, any one met office or BBC forecast, it's only a best guess in all circumstances. I do look around a bit but have usually found the advice wise.

[teestub]

I used to have two friends who worked in modelling for the met office, their opinion was that looking endlessly at forecasts is a waste of time, one quick look is fine, any one met office or BBC forecast

Met office are updating their forecasts the whole time; a weekend forecast can change drastically from Thursday to Saturday morning, which is my reason for looking endlessly at forecasts!

[GazM]

I used to have two friends who worked in modelling for the met office, their opinion was that looking endlessly at forecasts is a waste of time, one quick look is fine, any one met office or BBC forecast, it's only a best guess in all circumstances. I do look around a bit but have usually found the advice wise.

Absolutely. Surely we all have enough lived experience to know that it's always a best guess. This is why the idea of paying for a forecast seems so bizarre to me.

[tomtom]

@dolly - I use an app called ‘snow radar’ that of course does rain as well as snow 😁 it cost £3 at first but gives me the rain radar at 5 min intervals (with a 10 min delay a so at 9:40 it shows the 9:30 radar) along with one predictive model for the next 4-5 hours (extrapolating where the rain moves to) then a 5 day rain forecast at hourly intervals.

The 5 min data is really useful for showers / whether or not they’ve hit a crag you were planning to go to - or if it’s about to hit etc…

[spidermonkey09]

What stubs said re updates. I have a theory that the forecast for Sundays is less reliable than that for other days of the week because fewer people are updating it / checking data on the  day before, namely the Saturday, as they're off work. Probably complete nonsense!

[galpinos]

Plus Home and Dry for the best radar

Better than the updated radar on the Met Office app?

[Johnny Brown]

Yes, significantly. Much higher resolution and five minute intervals.

Snow radar mentioned above is the sister app which I only use if I want to see if the precipiation may fall as snow rather than rain. You can get the two as a bundle iirc.

[lagerstarfish]

Windy offering lifetime subscription to Pro for £44 at the moment