New YBW weather

Ooh, that's good, you've just saved me my annual subscription to the site.

BTW, ignore this Sgeir chap he's just a stirrer...

Edit - still need the sub to access more than just the day's weather, back to the drawing board....
 
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Weather? You mean sailing in this? Bog off, we're having much more fun being nasty about big engined blingers.

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I can see that!
 
I was very excited when I first clicked through, as I haven't found anywhere else that gives GRIB-based data on such a local scale for the UK. Then I discovered that you only get but 12 hours free, which is utterly useless for planning purposes. .

While £40 a year is a drop in the ocean to many of the big-engined blingers on here I feel that you could have made the free data actually slightly useful by extending the free look-ahead to maybe 36 hours, with the option to pay to extend it to 5 days.

Edit - I have just had a look at the Theyr site and I see that this is an affilliate scheme, so I guess you didn't have any choice in how much free data you could display . . .

- W
 
In terms of usability, I initially got the temperatures mixed up with the windspeeds, but after I read the guide it became clear and it seems fairly straightforward. In terms of accuracy, which you are obviously trying to sell, I always thought that after 3 days the accuracy of any forecast dropped below 50%, so why would I pay so much money for an innacurate forecast ? I'd guess that some people will pay for such a service as it gives you the option of planning in advance. On holiday I generally cruise the French coast and all French marinas put up a 5 day forecast which I've always found to be good enough, so for these main reasons I wouldn't subscribe to the service. The graphics look OK though !
 
The basic Theyr stuff looks OK, although I'm having trouble understanding/operating the animation gizmo. I haven't used Theyr for ages (prob stopped when they asked me to pay for it, or something....). Nice colours.

Biggest prob for me is that there is no forward forecast for tomorrow or several days hence. Is it intended to have a proper forecast in the final version?

Small issues; when you click on the area circle, the graphs coughed up are not terribly clear. Also, in kph/mph, even if you've set the main chart to knots. Can the pop-up graph box be bigger, clearer, and with a more understandable/obvious legend please?

Apart from the forward forecast (well they all are by definition I suppose), the animation and the graph, it looks good. Hope this helps.
 
Thanks guys. The amount of data we offer is an interesting point, obviously we do want it to be useful, but as pointed out it's an affiliate deal, obviously the goal is for people to sign up to the service. However, we want to provide you guys with something useful for free too. I'll pass this all on.

Cheers,
Dan
 
Mickey Mouse - I'm glad to say there are other free sources that give Met Office Synoptic charts, precipitation, temperature, upper atmosphere data etc.

While you're in that bit of the site anyway - thanks for giving Oban its own tide table (instead of Greenock's) but the areas are screwed up - Oban is NOT between Whitby and North.Foreland
 
40 quid a year!....

I think YBW weather section is an inappropriate name, more like weather advert.

As mentioned elsewhere at least give a day or so weather outlook not samples.

Why not link to something that'll be useful? e.g. Synoptic charts for areas or better still sponsor the Simon Keeler chap from the forums to give an independent weather overview every week.

What's there feels more like an exercise in fleecing my pocket than giving me something useful.
 
Just stopping by to say thanks again, this is all really helpful and it's great to compare against some of the other sites you guys are using. Hopefully it means we'll be able to refine our weather service to make it competitive - I get the impression that for the most part people are finding the actual information useful, hampered by the time factor.

We've also passed this info onto the guys at theyr.net to highlight any comments about the functionality and glitches. Sorry to copy the same reply across all the forums though, must dash!

Cheers,
Dan
 
Used to use Theyr when it was free - and found it very good - but stopped when it became subscription. I can't really see the point in offering one day's weather on the site here - I, and surely most people - tend to use the internet to decide whether or not to go sailing this weekend, ie looking forward at least two or three days, and use the VHF on the boat for finding out the weather forecast for the next 24 hours.

I'd probably use Theyr via YBW if it gave at least 48 hours and preferably 72 hours forecast because the local detail is better than what is otherwise available for free. But otherwise I'll stick with the Met Office site which for a five day outlook is reasonable, and free, and the Met Office's synoptic charts for the next 5 days (which I get via the links from http://www.greatweather.co.uk/) which even more useful, and also free.

Cheers
Patrick
 
I guess some people are hard to please, even with free information. Sadly, that includes me. I've had a play around the site and it just doesn't do it for me.

I didn't find the scales very useful. Europe as a zone is too small a scale and choosing either the wind force & direction or the cloud icon didn't show frontal activitity very well. The scale for British Isles as an area is too large and doesn't tell of approaching activities. Maybe the paid-up version gives more. From what I've seen, there is not quality or quantity of good information to be able to make a go or no-go decision..

I got there in the end but I didn't find the "Times" and changing the hour particularly intuitive. But perhaps that's more age related!

Albeit free, for just 12 hours forecast, I'll stick with Shipping, Inshore or the other free websites with synoptics.

Always appreciative of free gestures, though. Keep 'em coming.

David
 
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Interesting, but what does it give me that I can't get from xcweather.co.uk which has 5 days data for free?

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Agreed, when xcweather is working which it isn't at the moment. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
 
This is miles better. And global (inc UK, S Pac etc). And free.

Metvuw

This is what you guys will have at lunchtime on Friday

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I'm with most posters on here, much better data available for free. UGrib does all this better, faster and is free. Can't really see any point to this exercise at all. Free data is too short term to be useful for planning in fact relying on it alone could be dangerous. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
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