Metservice Rain Radar hopeless

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wratterus

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#280047 24-Nov-2020 08:34

Wondering if anyone else gets frustrated with the Metservice rain radar? It's not the radar itself, but the way they display it.

On the mobile app, if you zoom in, then move forward or back, it resets your zoom each time - same with the rain forecast too.

On the website, you can choose 300km or 120km which is nice, but it doesn't seem to be possible to choose the area, it's just the 120km closest to the particular radar you're looking at - unsure if that may be a limitation, or if it's simply a 'zoom in', surely they could let you choose the area you want to see. Zooming in on the 300km view does work OK, but I think it's a lower resolution possibly?

Just interested to hear if anyone else uses it a lot, and how you find it. Is there anywhere else to look at that same radar information that is displayed in a better way? Cheers.

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#2609578 24-Nov-2020 08:37

I just look out the window.😜

Sometimes I use big words I don't always fully understand in an effort to make myself sound more photosynthesis.

Benjip

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#2609580 24-Nov-2020 08:42

You could remove the two middle words from your thread title and you'd still be 100% correct (unlike Metservice).

Dingbatt

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#2609582 24-Nov-2020 08:53

I preferred the old MetService website. The radar pictures particularly, seem of lower quality now. But if you think what you are being presented with is poor, try having a look at the Australian BOM website.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

GV27

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#2609584 24-Nov-2020 08:55

The old website used to have a progress bar you could skip forward and back on with the rain radar and forecasts, the current one is garbage IMO.

tehgerbil

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#2609647 24-Nov-2020 09:59

It would appear they made the change to the website for no good reason, and despite the backlash they've made no changes since go-live (I've noticed).

It was a sad day when they removed old.metservice.com.

You really should read more into their shady practices.

It blows my mind our National weather service operate for a profit, and are extremely resistant to sharing their information publicly the taxpayer ultimately pay for, as many other countries around the world do.

If anyone works there would love to hear why they're such a backwards, arrogant and selfish company?

myopinion

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#2609648 24-Nov-2020 10:04

GV27:

The old website used to have a progress bar you could skip forward and back on with the rain radar and forecasts, the current one is garbage IMO.

Agree the new one blows. I download an app called Rain Radar NZ its miles better. Uses the Metservice radar but just displays it better on a phone and tablet.

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myopinion

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#2609650 24-Nov-2020 10:06

I use the 300km one hour loop. This is very handy for seeing how far away the rain is.

minigopher17

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#2609683 24-Nov-2020 10:47

You can see the "open data" MetService rain radars on WeatherWatch - https://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/maps-radars/radar/rain-radar

Disclaimer: I work for WeatherWatch.

myopinion

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#2609684 24-Nov-2020 10:55

minigopher17:

You can see the "open data" MetService rain radars on WeatherWatch - https://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/maps-radars/radar/rain-radar

Disclaimer: I work for WeatherWatch.

Wont they give you access to the 7 minute loop?

minigopher17

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#2609685 24-Nov-2020 10:57

myopinion:

Wont they give you access to the 7 minute loop?

No, that's commercial to them and not open data, so we can't have it without paying.

neb

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#2609696 24-Nov-2020 11:13

What blows my mind is that anyone still pays attention to the Metservice. Even airline pilots, who are required by law to go with Metservice weather reports, make some token motions for it and then if the can get away with it use a weather service that can actually predict the weather. It's a nasty catch-22, one person explained it to me as "we know it's almost certainly wrong but if we ignore it and there's a problem, we're liable".

Every time I hear family or neighbours complain about how wrong the Metservice forecast is, yet again, I ask them "then why do you keep using them if they're wrong over and over and over"? And then they go back to using the Metservice forecast. It's like they're trying to prove the (apocryphal) definition-of-insanity quote.

Some years ago, when deciding which weather app I wanted to go with, I ran a short experiment where I compared forecast accuracy over a two-week period for various services, this is what was predicted, this is what happened. The most accurate services were a bit of a cluster, one day Wunderground was better, one day it was whatever Google Weather uses, one day Accuweather, but the difference wasn't great. The one standout was the least accurate service, the one that was worst at predicting the weather. It was, very consistently, the Metservice.

Try it for yourself...

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neb

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#2609698 24-Nov-2020 11:15

minigopher17:
Disclaimer: I work for WeatherWatch.

Good on you. We'd all be a lot better off if the Metservice was simply shut down and WeatherWatch provided all of our forecasts.

Since you're obviously the officially appointed spokesperson for WeatherWatch :-), would you guys take a feed from PWSes like Wunderground and similar do? There's a massive amount of data available from NZ PWS users that you could take in directly...

bcbear

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#2609777 24-Nov-2020 13:43

and for my 2c

windy is not bad .. nice animation on app & website?

also metvuw http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain&region=nzni&noofdays=7

neb

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#2609779 24-Nov-2020 13:52

bcbear:
also metvuw http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain&region=nzni&noofdays=7

MetVUW is my other go-to site. Jim McGregor does a better job than the most of the Metservice, and it's only one guy.

minigopher17

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#2609782 24-Nov-2020 14:01

Good on you. We'd all be a lot better off if the Metservice was simply shut down and WeatherWatch provided all of our forecasts. Since you're obviously the officially appointed spokesperson for WeatherWatch :-), would you guys take a feed from PWSes like Wunderground and similar do? There's a massive amount of data available from NZ PWS users that you could take in directly...

WeatherWatch already uses PWSs - https://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/maps-radars/observations/live-observations

It used to be controlled by WUnderground until IBM bought it out and we continue to use them.

Plenty of ideas still to build on the to-do list :)

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