³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

I still can't find a UK pressure map on the new weather site.

Is this dumbing down?

Looks okay - I have one issue. The site is now really slow to load.

In fact, its so slow I'm tending to look for the weather at another site which takes about 1/4 of the time to load.

One small issue that I've found is that the 'Search' function doesn't seem to know where I live. I typed in 'Galashiels', and it gave me the option of:

* Galashiels (near Douglas, South Lanarkshire)
* Galashiels, Midlothian

Neither of which is correct (there's only one, and it's actually in the Scottish Borders).

The new /weather page is much slower to load, but does offer a more personalised experience, thus giving us what we want in detail, overall outweighs the slow response times.

A clean and modern look and feel.

I have found that since the beta version, some features have been removed. I no longer see the forecast video, the ability to collapse sections you want to see has been removed, when clicking one of the links such as "Night Weather" rather than seamlessly open, it reloads the page. Only one can be opened at a time and it does not remember what you have selected like the beta site. Search now returns page can not be found message

Its a shame as I was teased by the beta site and now its live, its dummed down!

"So take a look around the new site and let us know what you think. " Well - an email contact would be good. But there isn't any contact info in the site.
You've ruined what was a decent website by replacing it with something that looks as if you bought it on the web for £20.
Pressure charts ? Wind ? How can you have weather without wind ?
And your reliance on Flash is of little use to mobile users - particularly the fast-growing iPhone sector. We are out and about and need weather - not blank spaces where the Flash won't run.
Our only solution now is to use your old WAP site. Now, there's progress!

A 'new look' site that provides less information, and at a slower speed. Not good.

Frankly, I do not expect a weather forcast to resemble some kind of visual treat - what counts is the information it contains, and the accuracy of the forcast.

Forget the beauty contest, priorities have been lost here and some professional influence is required to bring the service up to the standards expected.

I was having great difficulty with the new site and it not remembering anything I told it but since clearing the cookies from the beta version it seems to be working.

Perhaps a little help bubble about that might help others?

Well, I can quote myself from the previous blog post

"IT and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ always seems like watching your Dad dancing at a wedding party. Full of enthusiasm, but just really painful to watch."

Style over substance

Looks over functionality

Not much good is it?

Too many IT toys taking too long to load, and it provides less information "at a glance" than before as the hourly forecasts have been lost in favour of only 4 "snap shots"

One glaring issue is the default chart (once it loads) is on such a small scale you cant see what is coming your way which is rather essential in terms of weather.

3 steps backward I would suggest.

With respect to Kurisu, it is not a 'small issue' if the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ search can't find Galashiels. It's a major one. And the search database should not include every tiny village, but main places in the UK. I don't want to be asked if I meant Cambridge, Gloucestershire, or Brighton, Cornwall. A search for main towns or the first half of the postcode is simple and people are used to it.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ seems obsessed with providing a Web service to the whole world. Very often this gets in the way of the service to British residents and the weather site demonstrates this. In the illustration accompanying the blog, off the bottom of the screen you will find "More about United Kingdom", "Travel advice for United Kingdom from government website (!)" and so on.
The page is headed "³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather : United Kingdom". This should be synonymous with "³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather". No objection to special pages for those travelling abroad, as we have special weather bulletins on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖTV, but the principal function of this page should be to give the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's customers and funders the web version of what we get on the radio or TV, and this site does not do that.

If this amount of snow had fallen in the North East of the UK, there would have been almost nothing said about it, except for 'They are used to it up there !' When it falls Darn Sarf, it is portrayed as a National Emergency/Disaster. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather Forecasters also are South East/ South Coast biased. Why is this ? It is the WEATHER that is important and NOT the Darn Sarfers !

The bigger issue for me is that the "Latest Observations" are wrong, certainly in my location.

The forecat for Huddersfield is at and claims latest observations as taken at Emley Moor, which is 5.24 miles away.

Click the RSS feed and look at its source and you see that the latitude and longitude are different to those quoted for Emley and areactually of Linton on Ouse.

The site is passing off weather observation from some 40-50 miles away.

I ask again: what was wrong with the old fashioned pictograms that showed at a glance what the weather was likely to be?

Now we have shades of colour representing... what?

I don't use the Beeb's weather page any more, particularly now it's relying on the resource-eating Flash to make it work.

2/10 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, must do better.

Likewise, I'm not enamoured of the new-look weather site. Apart from the lack of useful information at a glance (temperatures, wind speed / direction), I don't like how you can't see Scotland or England as a whole but have to go on to regional views. These, incidentally don't even have a separate temperature map. Not only that, they are not consistent with each other. In Scotland during yesterday's snow, the snow area was between Inverness and Elgin and visible on the North East map. On the Highland map which also includes Inverness to Elgin too, there was nothing. A few days earlier the forecast on the maps was completely different from what I'd just watched after the 10:00 pm News.

I'd like accurate information, at a glance, which I can trust. Right now the new look ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site delivers very little in all these areas.

If it doesn't improve, I'm off.

TTFN

no pressure maps? no wind speed/direction maps? And the layout will not win any prizes. Please have a re-think and stop believing that we - your customers - regard being given less information is somehow a good thing.

I biggest thing I miss from the old site is the ability to looks down a single column to see the progression over 24 hours - I can look across a row for 12 hours but then have to look across another row for the next 12 hours.

Are the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ monitoring how many people keep the 24 hour mode open or use the night section on the 5 day?

Earlier in the year the Met Office predicted that winter 2008 would be one of the warmest on record.

They could not have got it more wrong if they tried!

Despite having access to massive number crunchers the 5 day forecasts are usually a joke.

Wind Speed/Direction is a Must!

Come on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, don't just cater for the lowest common denominator, assume some viewers would like to be informed not whitewashed.

Instead of repeating, ad nauseam, the most trivial of "Breaking News" do little specialist 30 second weather spots for glider/power pilots, sailors, surfers, fishermen etc.

Finally, Eire should be included as most East Coast Irish aerials point at UK transmitters and weather knows no political borders. And lots of Brits live in the Southern part!

I would say "why on earth have you spent so much licence payers' money on redesigning the website when the new version is worse than the old one?", only I expect I know what the answer is.

Have you, perchance, recently had a new senior manager given responsibility for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather website, who, much like tom cats and furniture, feels compelled to leave his mark?

It's really hard to imagine any other reason. I really liked the way I could get the forecast maps on the old version to specifically show temperature, rain, or whatever else I was interested in. To judge from the comments above, that's not the only feature of the new website that's less good than the last.

Too small an area..... yes it would be nice to see what is coming! a zoom out facility would be a good idea.

Has the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, in their wisdom, decreed that temperature, wind and its direction, have no relevance to the weather,as a weather forecast, the maps are useless without these, so go on let me into the secret, how do I display this info within the maps?

Change for changes sake, if it aint broke dont fix it!

A pretty damning verdict, and I'm afraid I have to agree with everyone else.

8/10 for style, 2/10 for content. Never have so many pixels been used to convey so little information to so many people.

For heaven's sake, please bring back the pressure charts. Then we can begin to explore the many other shortfalls of your pretty new toy.

Richard:

I am glad....with the new format of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather Site...

~Dennis Junior~

Forget about the snow in the UK - we can't go skiing here - unless you live in Scotland! I think what's really appreciated is the snow reports in the Alps and further afield in the USA. The snow reports let people know if and where they should be going! It's appreciated. Snow Menu team -

Forget about the snow in the UK - we can't go skiing here - unless you live in Scotland! I think what's really appreciated is the snow reports in the Alps and further afield in the USA. The snow reports let people know if and where they should be going! It's appreciated. Snow Menu team.

It is REALLY slow... sometime I just want to look at what the weather is going to be... why have temperature colour coded? What about rainfall and temperature together? Why does my firefox look like it's crashing for 15 seconds after I click on the website... very pretty but pretty useless

The new weather site is horrible. Slow to load and run, and those ugly muddy shaded colours - what on earth do they mean? I agree with most of the comments above. Stop dumbing down. Give us wind speeds, temperatures and pressure contours, not a map shaded a muddy brown.

"Both broadcasting and computer technology are continually being developed to allow ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Weather to deliver the clearest forecasts we can."

Quote from

Who are they trying to kid?

If they added a screen shot of the new online maps to the bottom of this web page, they would then see, just what we all are trying to drum into them!

I couldn't agree more with the comments above. This is a continuation of the dumbing down of the TV weather maps which used to show isobars, wind speed, frontal systems etc. Why does the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ continually aim for the lowest common denominator? When weather maps showed the above detail, viewers could actually learn something about weather systems. For those who weren't interested, the forecasters still included all the required detail regarding sunshine, rain, hail etc. And looking at the current displays for one's locality - where has the expression "White Cloud" come from. Does it matter what colour a cloud is - what is of interest is whether it's unbroken, overcast, broken. I just wish I didn't have to subsidise the Broken Broadcasting Corporation.

I trust that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ will take notice of all those who have expressed disappointment at the new weather site, which has highlighted what an effective and successful product the previous site was. And I hope the organisation will be sensible enough to make some changes.
At the very least please bring back synoptic charts for the UK and atlantic, both current and forecast; and bring back charts with wind vectors and temperature.
Please have some consideration for those who play sport, fly, sail, or simply want to go for a walk with a good awareness and understanding of what the weather is likely to do. Otherwise we will all desert to Metcheck!

Could we please have the option of using the old layout?
The new site looks very pretty, but as an at-a-glance 5-day forecast I find it a lot less useful: things are no longer lined up in a table, and we are forced to read the labels ("Wind:", "Hum:", "Press:", "Vis:") every time which instantly becomes very tedious. It thus takes two or three times as long to get the 5-day rundown.

The redesign has made the weather information sought much harder to access.
It used to be my default choice for forecasts but, frankly, it is now so unfriendly I am seeking an alternative. I don't understand the necessity to tamper with something for the sake of it.

Let me add my weight to the mass of less than positive comments about the new weather site. I had posted these issues at length during the beta phase. None were answered, none were fixed, all were ignored.

1. As many have said, there is now no wind or pressure information. How can you have a weather site with no pressure or wind information on the maps???
2. On the detail maps you even lose the temperature information.
3. Arrow navigation on the detail maps is riddled with errors. Try it. For example you can't navigate north from Cumbria to Scotland, but you can navigate south from Scotland to Cumbria. You have to go extreme east or west to get north. Cheshire is a black hole. You can't navigate to it at all.
4. The weather people don't seem to understand the geography of the country. Town searches take you to inappropriate detail maps. Major towns are missing whereas minor ones are present. Towns are cited as being in the wrong counties. Lancashire apparently covers most of the Lake District so "Manchester" had to be introduced to correct the defect, but this map covers all of Lancashire anyway and there is already a separate Cumbria map. Stockport is on the "Manchester" map and isn't in Greater Manchester. Stockport is in Cheshire and isn't on the Cheshire map. The Cheshire map has only one Cheshire town on it and seven Lancashire towns. OK I live in Cheshire but have checked other maps and the same kind of error is repeated.....
5. There is no key to the colours on any of the maps. I can only see that the temperature is going to be light green or that the weather is going to be a bit grey verging on brown. Very useful.

The only useful thing about the new site is the ability to move more directly to a particular forecast point in time, but I would gladly have foregone this for some proper weather data.

I used to use the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ weather site all the time to predict conditions for my hobby activities, but now it is virtually useless because I need information much more than I need pretty fades and sliders. Sad to say that I have now moved to the Met Offices own site plus Metcheck and XCWeather.

Whether it was my browser or a mod to the site - but a map key has appeared, so I withdraw that objection.

Would you please take note of all these comments (I'm sure there would be more if the page were easier to find!) and simply give us the option of using the old layout?

Are you just waiting until we get sick of complaining so that you can say to yourselves "Oh they've got used to it now."?

PLEASE can we have some kind of response. The option of seeing the old format would be easy and cheap, and would satisfy everyone. Come on, we're sick of waiting!

Dear ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

I would like to enquire when you are going (a) change your website back to the old version or (b) employ someone other than a baboon to make you a new one that makes different features more accessible.

For example the wind speed on a particular day or time. I mean the wind has some significance on us people that go outside. surely it can't be hard to have some form of arrows on the map so you can see what it's doing at a certain time of day.

Similiarly the map now doesn't have any temperature indication without navigating thorough some unnessesary tabs. Why?

There also seems to be lots of glitches that make navigating the site slow and clunky, surely these should have been fixed before the site moved away from the Beta version.

The previous incarnation of the site was my sole source of weather information. It providing a quick and easy overview via the interactive maps of the temperature, wind, cloud cover and rain fall to be expected at a particular time of day. The new site simply does not do this.

Despite persevering with the new site for a while i now use alternatives which while not as good as the old site provide much more complete information far faster and more clearly than your new site!

Please sort it now!

Clearly you ARE just waiting until we get sick of complaining: it's almost three months since the last comment here, so perhaps you think that's enough. Now "they've got used to it" and everything is rosy.

PLEASE can we have some kind of response. The option of seeing the old format would be easy and cheap, and would satisfy everyone. Come on, we're sick of waiting! The new site is STILL pretty but much less readable.

Can Richard Chapman be fired?

I note that we cannot email the weather team so have chanced on this board in the hope that someone will read and respond.

Please could we have the wind direction and force arrows. Looking at one's region in three hour segments gives very little idea of which way the weather is moving and how strong it is out there. I live rurally and near the sea - wind direction and strength make a huge difference to me.

You said initially that wind arrows were encountering technical problems but would be re-instated - is that still going to happen and when?