How it works
Every major forecast, averaged, with an honest measure of how sure they are.
Where the forecasts come from
Every few hours we collect the 7-day forecast for your location from 6 sources:
- Met Office: The UK's national weather service, which also supplies BBC Weather
- ECMWF (Europe): The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, widely rated the most accurate global model
- GFS (US): NOAA's global model (United States)
- ICON (Germany): The German weather service's model
- Météo-France: France's national weather service
- GEM (Canada): Environment Canada's global model
Some sources only forecast a few days ahead, so later in the week the average may draw on fewer of them. We always show how many were used.
How we average them
For each day we take the mean of every available forecast's high, low, rainfall and wind. The weather description is the condition most forecasts agree on.
How we judge agreement
We look at two things: the gap between the warmest and coldest forecast, and whether they agree on rain. A forecast counts as wet if it expects at least 0.5 mm.
- Strong agreement: highs within 2.5°C, and no more than one forecast disagreeing about rain.
- Some disagreement: highs within 4.5°C, and a minority disagreeing about rain.
- Forecasts disagree: a bigger temperature gap, or a close split on whether it will rain.
Agreement usually drops later in the week. That's when an average is most useful, and when you should hold plans loosely.
Sunniest and gloomiest
For fun, and as a reminder of why averages help, we show which forecast is most optimistic (warm and dry) and which is most pessimistic (cold and wet) each day. That's the forecast you'd end up believing if you only checked the app that told you what you wanted to hear.
Limits
Averages smooth out extremes, so a sharp shower or a brief cold snap can look milder than it will feel. For severe weather, always check official Met Office warnings.