Apparently a few focus groups stated that the old weather forecast was outdated, so they decided to replace it with some three dimensional perspective projection which makes it totally impossible to see what the weather is going to be like in Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England on a small screen.
I don’t understand why they needed to make the map emphasise the south east of England. Why not just keep the old method of doing a birds eye projection instead of this crap?
We’ve gone from a perfectly clear method of presenting the forecast to some obfuscated 3D crap all because some idiots can’t concentrate long enough without having fancy three dimensional graphics.
Seriously, why was this change needed? The old method had served us just fine from 1985 and wasn’t particularly old fashioned. It got the point across without favouring any region of the UK and the icons were designed in such a way that you could see through them and onto the map below. Now the rain “effect” blocks out everything that it is placed on top.
Actually, no, the old one never worked well for those of us near a coast with unpredictable weather. Only the frontal systems gave me a good idea of what was going on, and not everybody stayed awake that long in their geography lessons
Boo hoo, Scotland looks small when viewed from one angle…but whaddya know, they can zoom in on Scotland to show where the snow will be falling! (and have done already) Did one cloud with a snowflake ever give that information?
So the north of the UK remains obscured throughout 90% of the forecast whilst the south east remains in focus for 90% and you think that that answers my gripe?
Seriously, I’ve already seen one forecast which spent half the time in the Highlands. So I don’t accept at all the suggestion that they’re just looking at the south, and that some ingrained Met Office prejudice demeans anything north of Watford.
Wah. They predicted rain all last week, and it didn’t show up until Saturday. Every winter they call for a horrific blizzard that never appears. We’d get a better forecast if they used fuzzy caterpillars, and you’re whinging because they changed your map? Get back to me when your sunny days weather predictions are filled with tornadoes.
Anticlimax: Goodness no, old chap! Only when it isn’t raining!
Haven’t seen the new maps myself, having dispensed with TV a while back. But I used to like it when the weatherman would stick his own clouds onto the map with magnets…
I think I may know what you’re referring to re: 3D mapping, but any links to see if it’s the same? Just wondering if what they’re doing is what I’m picturing.
Yes it will rain in Auckland, yes it will be cold down South and YES we will have to watch the very “interesting” 3D-ish clouds/rain etc on the weather forecast.
Will the weather forecast be right? Probaly not.
(AHHHHHHHHHH I had to bac3kspac3e soooooooooo m7any tim7es to type that.9 I hate m7y keyboard|)
If you play around there you should have some idea of the “improvements”
Personally I liked it better watching Michael Fish trying to stick little magnetic rain clouds on a map and watching them fall off again.
On the new scheme I really dislike the brown shitty colour of the map now. One of the things about having a decent amount of rain is a green landscape, so why can’t they show it like that?
I agree. I much preferred the old format. The new one is dreary and hard to look at. And somewhat unneccesary, too. What was wrong with the old format? It told us the weather, didn’t it? Now we have to look at brown landmasses instead.
It is shit, and I live in the super-magnified ultra-close-up 3D south.
The reason it is shit is that its precision exceeds its accuracy, which is a big no-no, scientifically speaking. In the old days, we would get a symbol, e.g. sunshine and showers (a black cloud with one raindrop and a sun symbol poking out from behind it). Good. That means, some sun, and some rain. The weatherman might add a bit more detail verbally, such as “Showers should die away during the day leaving a brighter afternoon”. That is good.
Now, we have animated shadows of cloud and sunny patches, and individual blobs of blue for rain showers, shown by the hour. Which would be fine if it had half a chance of being accurate, but it is of course total guesswork! What is the point of showing the cloud breaking over my house between 11am and noon, and then a shower passing over at half past three? It’s never going to happen exactly like that, so why bother showing so much spurious detail?
Another reason it is shit is that they have apparently decided that we are too dumb to understand isobars, so the synoptic chart has been completely removed from the forecast! A weather forecast without a synoptic chart is pretty shit, I think you’ll agree.
Yet another reason it is shit is the new system of wind arrows. Back in the old system, which showed a plan view of the country, the relationship between the size of the arrows and the wind speed was easy to figure out. Great. Not any more. Because of the stupid skewed perspective it is impossible to tell how big the arrows actually are - are those ones over Scotland smaller because they are far away or because they are actually small? (Father Ted viewers will appreciate the problem here.)
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