Met4Cast News & Updates

Written on: 30th Nov 2021

Hello. 

When I begun the Facebook page in 2011 it was because I wanted to give a more advanced “heads up” on potential severe weather. The Met Office in those days were far slower to issue warnings than they are now and I felt warning of severe weather several days in advance could be beneficial to some people. 

As both my Facebook & Twitter accounts continue to grow, I have decided to stop issuing ‘advisories" for a number of reasons. The main reason is that more people are reading and sharing the things I post so I have a growing duty of care to ensure the things I’m sharing are accurate. Updates during severe weather can be vital and at times even life and death. 

I will of course still be posting the same severe weather graphics however I will be framing them as “forecasts” rather than “advisories", I feel this gives them a very different tone and will help prevent any possible confusion between my graphics and those of official weather warnings. The same threshold based system will continue to be used. 

I will also attempt to share official weather warnings more often and emphasise them as best as I can. This is a minor change and something I've already implemented across the website. I've also been updating the website, here are a few other changes;

  • Website should now be more mobile responsive
  • Updated criteria page with more information
  • Updated About Page with “Meet the Team” cards
  • Moved blog section to the navigation menu
  • Added monthly outlook to the homepage, updated Tuesday and Friday

Road Map

I'm always trying to think of new ways of presenting the weather data in an easy to understand but exciting and new way. There are a few things I would like to try and implement during 2022, although it's unlikely I will manage to get to them all. 

  1. Animated weather graphics
  2. Video forecasts at times of severe weather
  3. A weather podcast

I have already begun work on the animated weather graphics, albeit they are still very early in development and I'm still trying out some concepts and figuring out exactly where I want to take them/how I want to implement them.