I'm off on a long-distance trip today, one I bought a ticket for several weeks ago. I have thus become very invested in what today's weather might be because a miserable outlook can wreck a good day out. My visit to Durham in 2015 was destroyed by heavy rain all day, my 2024 trip to Rugby left me soaked through and my 2018 spring break in Cornwall annoyingly coincided with The Beast From The East. What weather would Saturday 22nd February 2025 bring?
The BBC's weather website provides a forecast up to 14 days in advance, so on Sunday 9th February I refreshed the page and went "oh". Cold and wet, no sun, not ideal.
But the next day the BBC weather website had changed its mind, the rain had been downgraded to drizzle.
And then it changed its mind again on Tuesday (full-on sunshine) and again on Wednesday (wet).
And again on Thursday, again on Friday and again on Saturday.
Here's a summary of how the BBC forecast for today's weather changed over the space a week.
Regarding temperature there was a clear trend in that the weather on Saturday 22nd February looked to be getting warmer. Hurrah! But in terms of what the weather would be I'd been presented with the full gamut from overcast and wet to cloud-free and sunny, i.e. the forecast looked pretty random. I was no clearer knowing whether today's visit would be dry and fine or a total washout.
That was two weeks ago. I then carried on checking throughout last week.
And this time it's been a very consistent message that Saturday would be dry, sunny and mild. Hurrah!
Obviously it's a lot easier to forecast the weather as the day approaches, but to have got it right six days in advance is pretty good going. It's particularly good given that today is a brief sunny respite between two wet days, with yesterday seeing a heavy band of rain cross the region and tomorrow promising the same but with gales. It would have been all too easy to get the precise timing of these frontal systems wrong, but the BBC weather forecast has correctly identified 'Friday wet, Saturday dry, Sunday wet" since five days ago.
I've also been religiously checking the Met Office weather forecast for today at my chosen destination. They don't provide the BBC's forecast any more, theirs is separate and has been since 2018. They also don't provide a forecast until one week before a particular date, not two.
And they've had a very consistent message too, ever since last Sunday when the first sunny icon appeared.
So consistent has the message been, from both the BBC and the Met Office, that I've known since Sunday that I'm in for a dry mild day trip today. Hurrah! It isn't always this cut and dried, nor are both forecasts always in agreement, but they've both played a blinder over the last week in getting today's weather right.
However only the last week was good, the BBC's forecasts over the previous week were more like a meteorological roulette wheel and best ignored.
Indeed if I were to draw your attention to just one fact, it's that long-range weather forecasts are usually bolx. This is especially true if you work for a clickbait website and spot that some unreliable forecast has promised a slight snow flurry in six weeks time - please put your keyboard away and stop trying to hoodwink us with ill-judged certainties. But even the BBC's weather forecast can't be trusted two weeks out, it's just a low-probability best guess, which'll be why they never ever look that far forward on TV.
One week ahead, though, might just be spot on... which is why I'm currently speeding out of London towards sunny and mild, hurrah!
