From a very early age I've been fascinated by UK weather, and in the UK have a very diverse climate.
I even passed an 'O' Level in meteorology outside of school when I was a teenager!
My favourite weather sites are below, the one I use the most is Windy.com, as their visualisation of forecast winds is very accurate view of the likely pressure systems coming, and it's often possible to predict weather events days before they appear in the news. Then if there's a likely thunderstorm, I need a good UK Lightning Map. See the one below.
If you think I'm missing a great weather website, please let me know!
This is currently the weather website I use the most.
It's excellent for seeing what's on the weather horizon, with great visualisation of wind which helps understand the current and forecast pressure systems and weather.
Look lower down the page to see Windy.com in action!
This UK Lightning Map website is great as in shows both very recent strikes, but also shows previous lightning strikes in a fainter mark, so you get an idea of the intensity and direction of travel of the storm.
When a fresh lightning stike occurs, a ring expands outwards across the map from the position of the strike at exactly the speed of sound, so if you see a flash of lightning, at the moment the ring arrives at your position on the map, you will hear the thunder!
A future project will be to build a lightning detector to feed into this and other websites.
The starting point of this site is a uk map with clickthough pins taking you directly to a whole load of live weather station data and live weaher web cams throughout the UK
I live near the South Coast and whenever there's a severe storm I use this page to see exactly how strong the gusts are at my local weather stations.
The Weather Network has some great resources both on the initial page and deep with the website.
Many automatically centre the map on your location for ease of user experience.
The Met Office was founded in 1854 and today are the UK’s national meteorological service, responsible for public weather services and are at the heart of the UK’s weather
The Met Office helps government, businesses, emergency responders and the public to make informed decisions.
When severe weather threatens, their Yellow, Amber and (very rarely) Red Weater Warnings are relayed throughout the press to ensure the public are aware of dangers.
MetCheck is a great place to view how the various models are showing the long range forecast. They have a great selection of charts including Ensembles,GFS, Hurrine Medels, Wave Mels and much more.
MetCheck is often the goto source used by the press for weather forecast newspaper headlines. At the time of writing this (Feb 1st 2005), press websites are carrying a forecast of snow across the UK, which is exactly what the Met Check GFS Polar Charts seem to be suggesting.
I will give an update on accuracy in 2 - 3 weeks!