news.bbc.co.uk/weather > Reviews (3)

The BBC’s weather site…now there’s an interesting thing to review?? Surely it’s just a page with an up-to-date weather map on it…and perhaps an outlook for the next few days? Well, yes you’d be right. But it does have more to it than that…

The light blue homepage does show a satellite image of the British Isles, with various cities pinpointed on the map to help with those who don’t know where London is…oh dear…but obviously they’re just for reference points. As I type, there seems to be an awful lot of rain heading our way. Those in Ireland are currently getting soaked! There is a slider along the bottom of the map which you can manually move to see what will happen to the weather over the course of the next few days. It could be a wet one looking at this!

You can change the map to a temperature map, but at this time of year everywhere’s getting colder, and no one wants to accept that! There’s a search option in the top right corner of the page which allows you to type in a place or postcode which allows you to see a five-day forecast for that place. It will recognise any postcode in the UK, often by placing it in the nearest town.

Since te advent of the Iplayer by the BBC, they’ve incorporated a forecast video into the site which is a clever move and a sensible one given the technology available to them nowadays.

Elsewhere on the page there’s also a host of related links taking you to pages on the BBC site including shipping forecasts, average conditions, climate guides and details for snowsports, along with external website details such as the MET office and World Meteorolgical Organisation…yes, such an organisation exists.

There’s a weather news page, which many might question what news can there be? But it is of course an international website, so considering the disasters in the past couple of weeks with earthquakes and tsunamis, it’s a highly important piece of the website. It obviously links to the articles on the BBC News website, so expect detailed coverage.

And naturally, there’s a photo gallery, but seeing as it’s all particularly boring at the moment you can check it out for yourself. The website does give you details of how to submit your own photos – all must be done electronically, so no snail mail…considering the current situation, that’s probably a good thing!!

So there you have it, a review on the BBC Weather website…such a thing exists!