https://www.mountain-forecast.com/
This website has always charged for the app, but not the web page. Now they are charging for that too. It is only possible to expand the view for the current day. Everything else is padlocked.
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Today I learnt you could expand the days to see a more granular forecast.
Sunday looks nice.
Go to bed at 00:02, so then you have a few minutes to check “tomorrow’s” weather?
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I gave up on that website when they suggested it would be sunny at 7pm in December.
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It was particularly accurate for GM summits.
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That’s a bugger - I used that the most, and thought by far it was the most accurate. Nothings free these days. Will have to splash out
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Recently, I’ve found it to be way off. Wind speed and cloud cover forecasts have been inaccurate on several occasions.
Fraser,
That may be due to an increased variability in the weather these days. Our BOM has the biggest computer in the Southern Hemisphere and a team of top notch forecasters but still can’t tell me if it will really rain tomorrow or not. There is a probability, a likely amount and the time expected. Mostly all 3 parameters are wrong.
Forecasts were imo better a decade ago. The reason I suggest is due to climate warming and a consequence increase in unpredictability in forecasts.
Last year I planned an activation on a summit near the end of the bonus period. The BOM forecast rain early in the morning. I shrugged and set out. There was a foot of fresh snow to greet me and a locked gate.
Makes life interesting.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
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Are you logging in with an account? I have an account but don’t pay anything and can see 6 days including today
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No, never needed to. That seems to be what has changed. I’ve downloaded the app and registered an account. I can now expand the next few days on the app. Despite being logged into the website version, the days ahead are still locked with the green padlock, so, they are forcing me to use the App.
The 12 day mountain forecast is not worth paying for, especially in this country!
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I think we are now out of luck! For the last few months, I couldn’t see ahead on the desktop version for more than the current day’s forecast but the app would allow me to look ahead for 3 or 4 days. Today the app suddenly started to act exactly like the desktop. I guess we will need to look for another alternative to mountain weather forecast. Too bad, I used it all the time and found it to be extremely helpful but I refuse to pay a subscription.
Paul
VA6MPM
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I can see today and tomorrow. Everything else is locked. I’m not against paying for an app, however their website is littered with adverts and they expect us to pay for that as well.
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Stepping back a bit on the topic:
As somebody with a lifelong curiosity of meteorology, I am often staggered by the misconceptions that abound regarding the science. I suppose this is to be expected in our news/information as ratings-driven entertainment clickbait.
Watching broadcast new one might surmise that an aptitude in meteorology is directly proportional to bra size. Weather forecasts there are presented as absolutes leading to the conclusion that “the weatherman is wrong.”
As some of you surely know: weather forecasting is like book-making. The science presents odds. Really good meteorologists present forecasts as statistical probabilities. Of course this means that one cannot determine that “the weatherman is wrong” if they predict an 80% chance of rain and it doesn’t, in fact, rain that day. What I have found is that if weather scientists (not TV personalities) predict an 80% chance of rain, out of 100 same forecasts it will actually rain pretty close to 80 times.
As computing power has increased, the statistical models have become amazingly good. I like to read the “Area Discussion” page of my local NOAA office. This is a discussion among meteorologists regarding the forecast. I’ve found that if the various models agree, run to run, the forecast is almost always dead nuts on. If there are inconsistencies among the various climatological models and/or the models shift from run to run, these offices with state that there is low confidence in the forecast. Anomalies may occur.
All and all weather forecasting has gotten remarkably good despite the common perception that “The weatherman is always wrong.”
Thanks for bearing with my weather nerd rant.
73 Eric KG6MZS
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That’s certainly my impression of US TV weather. That and spreading panic about wild fires and storms. We’re just back from Florida. There were daily forecasts for heavy rain and thunder across the state, shown in bright red across the screen. Eventually, we had one day with rain and it only rained heavily for an hour.
In the UK, we have mwis.org which provides accurate text based mountain forecasts, but only for the main mountain zones. Recently, mountain-forecast.com has come in the scene with visual forecasts. Sometimes the forecasts vary wildly between the two sites.
Our Met Office now has forecasts for mountains as well.
Mountain weather forecast - Met Office
The Met Office do cover some outlying areas, so I guess I’ll be using that going forward.
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I prefer this for my weather news:
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That’s more depressing than the atmospheric weather! (For HF😉)
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Very true. Explains why the bands are absolute trousers recently!
UPDATE: And the bands are going to be terrible for a while it seems:
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metcheck.com i like to use. seems very accurate to me
How about predictwind? Not sure what that includes in G-land, but for ZL the free version it gives you 5 models side-by-side of which one of ECMWF, GFS and PWG are likely to be accurate! As said above, if they agree then you have good confidence, if they disagree you use your judgement.
Also includes UK Met Office which is abysmal in ZL but may be better further north.
ECMWF is a dedicated mountain weather forcast model. Both ECMWF and GFS go out to 10 days.
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