Or is BBC weather overtly pessimistic.

[KitKatKathy]

Across the day, the likelihood of rain shown by the bbc weather app is never less than 70%. Currently there is a 100% chance of rain, with the double raindrop icon showing. However, it has hardly rained all day - A couple of light showers earlier but certainly not the monsoon the BBC threatened.
This often seems to be the case for our area.

AIBU - The BBC weather app is pretty accurate.
AINBU - The BBC is as horribly pessimistic.

The BBC needs to go and look up the definition of a "forecast". It's not something that you change hour by hour, presumably as they look out the window to see what the weather is currently doing!

I hate the BBC weather, and actually most other things about them too.

I never find that looking at the “overall summary of the day” icon is at all useful, unless it’s showing full sun. BBC always seems to err on the “if rain will happen at any point there’ll be a rain symbol even though most of the day is dry” - I presume people hate being caught out by rain if they assumed there’d be none, so the forecast shows “worst possible outcome”.

If I actually want to know what’s likely to happen I look at the forecast maps on the met office app. Then I can see if it’s an inexorable bank of solid rain coming in across the whole country, or a small series of isolated blobs of rain that may or may not pass overhead.

I kind of disagree with this. The forecast can be updated hourly as the predictive models update with actual weather data. They’re always going to be somewhat inaccurate but I’d rather they update with the latest info.
Again, best to look at the forecast maps (eg on the met office app) rather than the forecast symbols - they’re much more helpful in understanding the uncertainty.

Of course a forecast is something that can be updated hour by hour. It'd be a bit bloody daft to have all this extra information coming in all the time and going "Nope, not going to use that, lets use our best guess for last week"

I use the Met Office one instead and look at the radar rainfall prediction online. I've long since learnt that if the BBC weather says 40-60% of rain, it will be dry and mostly sunny all day.

TBH I tend to look at the sky, which seems to give a more reliable prediction than the BBC.

Bollocks, frankly.

I'm talking about a forecast for this afternoon which, at 10:00 says 40% chance of rain, then at 12:00 says 50% chance of rain, then surprise surprise, sunny with no rain at all - which is what the forecast "happens" to say at 16:00.

Yes, of course the forecast should be fine tuned to improve it's accuracy from say a week out but I stand by my post, it more often changes to reflect what's it's doing in real time. That's useless, I can see that for myself. It's no better than the drivers who don't indicate until they turn the wheel.

That’s what happens when there are lots of scattered patchy showers about. Just look at the forecast radar type maps if you want a better idea of what’s coming up. Nothing wrong with the type of forecast you describe - 40% chance isn’t that high, it means that at that one spot, there’s a 4 in 10 chance that at some point over the preceding hour, a bit of rain of any duration will fall.

I read an article about this. Basically for the symbol for the day they pick the worst thing. So 10 hours sun and two of rain they’ll use the rain symbol.

Today's forecast for SW London was particularly inaccurate - from 07.00 it was saying thundery showers all day can't remember the % but it was high as I was considering changing my plans.

Apart from a very brief drizzle of rain at 12.30 it's been dry and sunny with a bit of a breeze

I definitely find it on the pessimistic end

But Met Office does the same and predicts far less rain overall. I find it much more accurate in general.

There’s a campaign about this at the moment lead I think by Chester Zoo with lots of other outdoor attractions backing it too. Apparently the picture of a rain cloud on the day summary (when actually the majority of the day will be dry) can be enough to put people off going to an outdoor attraction, which is affecting visitor numbers for them.

I do prefer met office - mostly because I only really use the maps and they’re easier to access on there.

I use the ‘looking at the sky’ now as well.

The BBC has put so much info into its forecast that it’s become kind of useless. 40% chance of any rain at all, at any one location, within my local area (which is pretty big) – what am I to do with that?!

You have to look at the hour by hour forecast.

BBC overly pessimistic? “Worst drought ever.” (Cue three weeks of rain.) “Britain scorching in extreme heat.” “Rain misery to lash Britain . Beast from the East. Red warnings.” It seems that “moderation” is not in the BBC vocabulary.

Absolutely. Also if rain is expected.in any given day for a short period, say between 1-2pm, it shows black clouds and raindrops as the main icon for the whole day 😂 you have to actually click on the day to find out the rest is going to be sunshine.

We were in holiday last week and the week beforehand BBC weather showed torrential rain, hailstorms and thunder for the week. We had glorious weather with a few showers