They say long-term weather forecasts are unreliable – could crowdsourcing them be better?
While the accuracy of one and two day weather forecasting has been increasing steadily for years, accuracy drops off significantly between six to eight days; beyond 10 days chaos theory makes prediction very tricky indeed.
Here in the Britain people have an almost natural instinct for the weather, however, so could crowdsourcing a forecast be better?
Only time can prove us right or wrong, but here are Great Britain’s weather predictions.
Following the wettest UK winter on record, people could be forgiven for not thinking it will end any time soon. But 45% think the continuous wet and stormy weather will be gone by 19th March (the median prediction).
While almost a third of people (31%) think dryness will come even sooner, still 11% say the rain will stay for ten more weeks.
Getting over the storms is one thing, but when will the sun actually come out?
Although the Met Office say spring starts on 1st March, the median week chosen by the public to mark the first prolonged spell of warm, sunny weather to signal spring is the week starting 7th April.
18% say that won’t happen until May, however, while 2% say there won’t be any warm, sunny weather at all this year.
So are the public any good at forecasting? Well the BBC say that March could see something “more akin to normal. There is cautious optimism for pressure to build from the south”, which happens to be very similar to the public expectation.
