1) When cycling, or more correctly before setting out on a ride. Knowing what the weather is going to be like is very important, the last thing you want is for halfway through a sunny cycle ride, is for the skies to darken and the rain to come pouring down and soaking you to the skin, or even worse to be carrying a whole bunch of waterproofs in your backpack and for it not to rain – you have just carried all that clutter around for miles only not to use it!
2) The Met Office is bordering on criminal in how accurate it is. There was a time a few years ago that I used to take an umbrella when they said it was going to be sunny and visa-versa. To be honest, despite having access to enough computing power to send everyone to Britain to the moon and back they are still awful at predicting the weather. I think they must be more concerned about predicting global warming temperature rises in 50 years time, I would personally be more happy if they could get tomorrow mornings temperature right for the next morning in their nightly weather update.
So given these two fact what can we do? Well I have a solution that has worked for me; it is called Weather Pro – it is an app for the iPhone (it is available for Blackberry and Android phones also). And do you know what – it is generally very accurate, so much so that it can give you within a 3 hour time slot when it will start raining and 9 times out of 10 it is accurate the night before for the day ahead (to the hour). It also does a weekly forecast and that is generally accurate 9 out of 10 times, though it does tend to be less accurate on the hour the rain will come 5 days ahead (it is still about 50% accurate though).
I have come to rely on this app heavily – it is so nice to have correct information the night before for setting out the correct clothing (though I do give it a final check in the morning). It is so rare that it lets me down that I have no qualms about recommending you spend the £2.39 it costs.
We have run checks in the office – my app Vs. the standard weather app on the iPhone and the BBC / met office website and I have won every time.
The only question to answer, now I know what the weather is going to be like, is to ask why the Germans can be more accurate about U.K. weather than the met office here?
Some official blurb on the App features
SEVEN DAY FORECASTS INCLUDING:
- 3-hourly intervals
- Weather reports for over two million locations worldwide
- Temperature (Celsius/Fahrenheit) and the all important “feels like”
- Wind direction and speed (in your chosen format)
- View forecast as a graph for an alternative, easy to read outlook
- And more…comprehensive forecast features from Europe’s leading independent weather company
GLOBAL SATELLITE AND ANIMATED RADAR:
- Radar images for the USA and much of Europe
- Pan and zoom functionality
- Tilt screen for landscape format
PLUS:
- Interactive map-based city search
- Available in 10 European languages
- Favourites settings
- Weather Reports
- Weather News
- Points of Interest
- No adverts
Some Screen shots
Well what can I say it works for me - give it a try if you are searching for a good app like this
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