I walk to work usually. It takes about 30 minutes on a road that can get very windy. I need a weather forecast that is plain, like ‘Take your brolly and a light jacket.’
I need to know whether I need an umbrella or not. I need to know if I need a jacket or not. I need to know whether I should be catching the bus because it will pour down raining.
Instead the weather forecast is ’ A few clearing showers with gusty squalls and a maximum of 19.’ Least useful weather forecast ever.
I still do not know what ‘clearing showers’ mean. I think it means showers in the morning and then fine. But if that is the case, why don’t they say that.
I am not complaining about the accuracy of the forecasts. As for predicting the next day’s weather they are very accurate most of the time. What I am complaining about is that I have to interpret what they are saying. For example the ‘A few clearing showers with gusty squalls and a maximum of 19.’ needs to be interpreted and investigated at the Bureau of Meteorolgy’s website. Depends which way any wind may be coming from. Sometimes -A few clearing showers with gusty squalls and a maximum of 19- can mean a beautiful sunny warm day after a very brief shower in the morning. Sometimes it means showers most of the day and a biting cold wind.
Most people working in offices probably do not care about the weather forecast. 90% of the people at my work drive here to an underground carpark. They do not really need to know whether to take an umbrella or a heavy jacket. I do.
Well, they aren’t doing a weather forcast for the street you personally walk down.
Yeah, I don’t get your problem. “Clearing showers with gusty squalls and a maximum of 19” suggests to me it will be chilly with a chance of rain in the morning, and likely brighter and warmer (but not T-shirt weather) in the afternoon. Seems plenty of info to me. Showers in the morning? Take a brolly. Gusty squalls? Take a jacket. You might not need either in the afternoon.
The precision of weather forecasts is not enough that they can say “In X part of town it will be raining between 8 an 8.30 am, then it will be dry in the afternoon except for a brief shower about 2.15.”
A couple years ago I was volunteering doing stage hand work at a blues festival. The guy who worked for the company providing the huge speakers had a notebook computer. He had a subscription to a weather service that allowed him to see real-time Doppler radar (what he called it). He would warn us that it would start raining in 10 minutes. It would. Then he would tell us that it would last only a few minutes. It would.
I guess because we’re all different. The local weather on my news channel takes about 10 minutes to get through, with local maps, and maps of Canada, and some points in the U.S. along with cold fronts, and warm fronts, and circles and arrows and RADAR images with I.R. and visible precipitation and then finally, in the last 30 seconds, the local 5 day forecast. This is all I’m interested in: the local 5 day forecast. As for the weather right now, I use this amazing invention called a “window.”
Wher I am, micro-climates rule. The weather is 60 to 95 degrees from one side of the radar map to the other. One side of the ridge is soaked with rain and the other endless drought. Impassible fog in the river swale and zero clouds from altitudes 10’ and higher.
May be enough for you in England. Have you ever experienced Melbourne weather?
These days, the Australian version of that is publically available on the web. I live by the 128 km Melbourne Rain Loop , it’s bloody fantastic.
What do you mean? Melbourne seems to have a fairly pleasant climate, a bit warmer than London , with less rain.
Melbourne has a reputation in Australia for being a “four seasons in a day” kind of place. The meteorologists do their best with this, but are unable to accommodate folks who can’t get their act together to look out a window. I’d sue the bastards!
Heh, just like the whole of the UK then! In that case blinkingblinking, I share your pain. 
Last night as I was getting ready for work (first day at a new job), I had my sister check the weather. She said we were supposed to have a small chance of light showers in the evening and drizzle in the morning.
For some reason, I decided to take a spare set of clothes to work, just in case.
It’s a good thing I did. Right after I left the house, a raging thunderstorm started. It lasted a good 4 hours.
I have a 3.5 mile bike ride to work. I was completely soaked by the time I got there 20 minutes later. I haven’t lived in this area very long. I was used to the forecasts for Western Massachusetts being fairly accurate. Apparently Northern NY weather is a little more tempermental.
I thought that I wrote clearly. Apparently I did not. I am not complaining about the climate in Melbourne. I have lived in Auckland, London, Fukuoka, London,Phnom Penh and Melbourne. Melbourne’s climate is by far my favourite. The four seasons in one day is fairly rare.I am not complaining about the accuracy of the weather forecasts. I am complaining that the forecast is not clear.