New BBC Weather Maps

May 16th, 2005 - 18:39 | 12 comments

Anyone seen the new BBC Weather displays? They’re cool! You can see where rain / sun / clouds are predicted much more accurately than before. I always felt a bit sorry for Wales, which generally had just the one logo overhead. Now you can see small pockets of cloud and rain appearing as the hours go by. Once I figured out that light = sun, shaded = cloud, I could see what was going on very easily.

Hopefully they’ll be able to use the new technology to compare these maps with the actual results, so we’ll be able to see how accurate it is. I’m not making any sly references there - I studied some meteorology briefly and sympathise hugely with anybody who tries to make any predictions! When chaos theory comes into play, you know you’re dealing with some complex systems. Incidentally, the computers than power it are ’standard’ desktop machines:

Dual 3.06GHz Xeon Processors (533MHz FSB / 1MB cache)
2 GB Dual Channel DDR 266Mhz ECC SDRAM
2 SCSI 73GB (15,000rpm) hard drives
Ultra 320/M SCSI Controller Card
NVidia FX6800 Ultra 256MB graphics card

Damn, apparently my computer wouldn’t be up to displaying the weather map. This calls for an upgrade.

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12 Responses to “New BBC Weather Maps”

1 Lynsey May 17th, 2005 at 8:56 am

I’m gonna be all Conservative and say I don’t like them much! That brown colour is horrible and have you noticed, rain is shown by a big puddle, making it look as if the UK is covered in lakes! I had to work out if it was showing the Norfolk Broads or a wet Norwich!
2 Tom Williams May 17th, 2005 at 11:08 am

I have to go with Lynsey on this one - I think they would have been better off improving the old maps, maybe adding things like a smooth zoom into a smaller region and suchlike. I’ve always understood that weather was a complex system that could never be predicted accurately over any length of time, so surely creating a map which will show EXACTLY where it’s going to rain the day after tomorrow is a bit over the top! On the other hand, as you say it would make a great analysis tool for looking back at previous weather… but not in that awful muddy brown!
3 Lynsey May 17th, 2005 at 12:30 pm

I liked seeing the Atlantic fronts coming up to get us as well … I guess the new maps are fine for people who just want to know what it’s going to be like where they live - but I like to see weather developing and that’s missing on the new maps
Like the topography though, that’s cool
4 Andrew May 17th, 2005 at 1:16 pm

I don’t mind the brown too much, although a blue would perhaps have easier on the eye. I imagine it’ll evolve fairly quickly.

True about the developing weather, but maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to the new layout. Some floating isobars would be a nice touch, however
5 Lynsey May 17th, 2005 at 1:47 pm

Blue? Can’t have blue - tis the colour of the sky and of rain! Green would be nice, or pink!

I’d like to see white or grey clouds (depending on the murkiness) floating above the ground and then zooming in through the cloud cover to see ground conditions! Also 3D wind arrows for speed and direction.
6 Tom Williams May 17th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

The explanation on the intro I saw was that brown was found to be the colour that shows up the cloud shadows best… not very cheerful to look at though! Yes, I don’t see why they couldn’t have 3d cloud cover, after all I’ve got simulators on my computer which is way lower spec than what the BBC uses, and they can show really realistic looking clouds!
7 Amy May 29th, 2005 at 3:02 am

I don’t like the new graphics!

I appreciate some aspects, but the overall effect is unattractive, and the wind arrows are AWFUL. Plus you can’t see the old pressure charts like we used to.

There is a Google bomb campaign under way to get ugly graphics to point to the BBC weather page!

Explanation and “how to” are here:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/googlebombbbcweather/weather.html
8 Andrew May 29th, 2005 at 10:44 am

Did you really find the pressure charts useful before? Really really?

How about the revamped style unveiled yesterday?
9 Lynsey May 29th, 2005 at 8:03 pm

Yeah…you can see what’s coming up with the pressure charts!
10 Andrew May 29th, 2005 at 10:49 pm

but that’s what the weather report is telling you!
11 Lynsey May 30th, 2005 at 11:41 am

But it’s more interesting to work it out yourself
12 Andrew May 30th, 2005 at 12:04 pm

You can do that with the online pressure reports…

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