Outdoor Discoveries

New site for Accuweather UK and Ireland

When OnlineWeather.com was replaced by Accuweather.com UK and Ireland, there were some things that were lost. Among these were maps for long range regional forecasts and regional precipitation probabilities; the latter was limited to mountain forecasts.

After something of a hiatus, maps are making more of an appearance in the new site, albeit for the whole of the UK and Eire rather than the regions as before. Interestingly, one piece of text referred to the UK as “the nation”, giving away the American origins of the forecasts. Local forecasts continue but with more description of what the weather is going to do over the whole day: a useful summary. However, the number of places covered seems to have been reduced: for example, Dolgellau is no longer recognised and looking for Keswick results in the weather for Norwich, not good. When a search request is not found, the header disappears at times but that is probably a teething problem.

In summary, this site looks more pleasing on the eye than the old (apart from the ads with which it is laden unless you pay for the service) and contains some new features such as health-related forecasting. In addition, they also have very nice feeds for blogs and so on. Nevertheless, it has some way to go before it fully occupies the niche left by OnlineWeather, which seems to be fulfilled a little better by Metcheck. That said, the site provides another perspective, if a conservative one, and is more than valuable for that.