New BOM Website

[rgmwa]

7 hours ago, onetrack said:

 

https://www.bom.gov.au/location/australia/western-australia/lower-west/bwa_pt053-perth

 

Apparently tomorrow we have a 100% chance of no rain. Seems like a strange way to describe it. So when we have a 100% chance of rain I assume it’s going to be expressed as 0% chance of no rain! 
Whar are they thinking? What’s wrong with the old ‘x% chance of rain tomorrow’. That makes a lot more sense to me. 

Edited Sunday at 10:27 AM by rgmwa

[old man emu]

11 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Whar are they thinking?

Website developed using AI ?

[octave]

11 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Apparently tomorrow we have a 100% chance of no rain. Seems like a strange way to describe it.

Is it strange? It depends on what the question is.   If the question is what the chances are of it not raining (so I can go out in the boat or for a bushwalk), oh, 100% great or what are the chances that rain will impact my activities  (0% -great). Both of these are logical.   I think the complaint is that they used to do it this way, and now they are doing it a different way.  I don't think many people would be confused and not understand what it means.

[old man emu]

12 minutes ago, octave said:

Both of these are logical.

Tghat flags the use of AI in creting the website.

[octave]

Just looking at the how the chance of rain is expressed.

 

In my location next Friday at 5am

There is: 

a 50% chance of 0mm (50%  it won't rain)

a 25% chance of at least 1mm

a 10% chance of at least 3mm

 

On the old forecast site, it just gives a 75% chance of rain on that day.

 

I can't see why anyone would be baffled by this.

 

Edited Sunday at 10:14 PM by octave

[octave]

The chance of rain does have some science behind it.  There are also different ways of expressing the same prediction. For example, there is an 80% chance of marital relations with Mrs Octave tonight or a 20% chance of not getting any; it means the same thing.

There is always a conundrum in communicating information to a varied public. Someone will always be unhappy. In Britain, there was a campaign in 2011 to do away with percentages and use narrative terms like "slight chance" and "scattered"

 

Probability of precipitation

 

 

[facthunter]

AI has always been in RAIn.   Nev

[Marty_d]

2 hours ago, octave said:

The chance of rain does have some science behind it.  There are also different ways of expressing the same prediction. For example, there is an 80% chance of marital relations with Mrs Octave tonight or a 20% chance of not getting any; it means the same thing.

There is always a conundrum in communicating information to a varied public. Someone will always be unhappy. In Britain, there was a campaign in 2011 to do away with percentages and use narrative terms like "slight chance" and "scattered"

 

Probability of precipitation

 

 

Sounds like you mean "Probability of copulation".

[rgmwa]

3 hours ago, octave said:

Just looking at the how the chance of rain is expressed.

 

In my location next Friday at 5am

There is: 

a 50% chance of 0mm (50%  it won't rain)

a 25% chance of at least 1mm

a 10% chance of at least 3mm

 

On the old forecast site, it just gives a 75% chance of rain on that day.

 

I can't see why anyone would be baffled by this.

 

Yes, no problem with that. I just prefer to know what the chance of rain is, not what it isn’t. Just makes more sense to me but it’s not a big issue. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, if you don’t like that complaint, I have others. 

[octave]

3 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Yes, no problem with that. I just prefer to know what the chance of rain is, not what it isn’t.

Glass half empty rather than glass half full (depending, of course what you are hoping for)🙂

 

My natural curiosity made me look at other countries' weather sites, especially radar. Compared to all these sites, BOM's old site does seem a little dated and certainly harder to operate. Drag and zoom does seem to be favoured over defined steps to the next radar site over or defined clicks between levels of zoom rather than a smooth zoom to the desired  magnification.

 

US National Weather Service

 

UK Met Office

 

European Radar

 

 

Old BOM Radar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 05:42 AM by octave

[rgmwa]

27 minutes ago, octave said:

Glass half empty rather than glass half full (depending, of course what you are hoping for)🙂

I can't fly in the rain.

[octave]

5 minutes ago, rgmwa said:

I can't fly in the rain.

Yep, that's true. I remember when we moved from the city to the bush in 1990. As city folks, we defined good weather as sunny and dry. We soon learned that to our farming neighbours, dry and sunny was not necessarily good. With time, we polished up our small talk so as not to annoy the farming folk.  "Good bit of rain last night" was safe, if you really wanted them to like you,  just add  "just need a bit of follow-up rain"

[old man emu]

What they don't tell you when you move from the city to the country is that the first thing you need to install is a rain guage.  "Good bit of rain last night" doesn't provide sufficiant data for comparison. You need actual figures.

[facthunter]

They don't cost Much. Anyone irrigating must have one.   Nev

[spacesailor]

I just ' throw ' the dirty dish water at any drooping plants !.

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

From an ABC News Quote quiz:

 

After reasing this thread, it was an easy guess. 

 

The site looks OK to me.. 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:12 PM by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

10 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

The site looks OK to me.. 

That's because you are half a world away. 

 

Ovenight at my place, tthe wind was blowing very strongly. That's unusual. This morning, and as I write this, it is raining. Only light rain (but welcome). The tempearture is about 10 degress below normal. 

So I went to the new BOM site. Lots of pretty, coloured diagrams, but no accurate information on wind direction and rainfall areas. The grain harvest is happening here. Farmers will want to know how long the rain event is likely to be, and how much rain is likely to fall. These farmers are not morons. They are highly knowledgible people concerning their occupation. This new site format fails to deliver the sort of data they need for decision-making. All this site can tell them is the same diluted information that is presented in those short weatehr reports on TV, which are so generalised as to be useless.

 

We are coming into the summer storm season. The display of radar data in the new format does not allow a person to track the development and movement of storms as was possible in the previous version.

 

All in all, the new format is a useless expenditure of $4 million.

[facthunter]

There's been PLENTY of complaints about it.  Nev

[old man emu]

I would like to have a qualified (competent, and experienced) webdsigner provide a critique of the site in much the same terms as an art expert, or a film expert would critique a work of art or film. I'm no expert, but I have seen much better sites. The BOM site looks like it was put together usting HTML4.

 

At the risk of being accused of narcissm, here is the website my son created for a business that started from scratch recently. There are a lot of "coming soon" bits because as of today,  the business has not commenced those services, but at least one can see that the services are proposed. However, I think that the site design makes it easy to access the information a potential customer would like to see. 

https://www.bravenx.com.au/about-us/

[octave]

8 minutes ago, old man emu said:

but no accurate information on wind direction and rainfall areas

 

Again, all the information that was available is still available.  Some of it has not been in been incorporated into the new site, but the links take you back to the old site for the time being. It is true that with any change, there can be a little frustration with it being navigated to differently. Why can I find these things, and others can't?

 

Here is the rainfall info.   I don't think you should have trouble with this because the link takes you back to the old site at this stage.

Here is some of the info on rainfall.

 

https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/rainfall/

https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/

Latest Weather Observations for Camden   

 

Everything that was available is still available. Pages that have not been added to the new site are linked back to the old site for now.

 

 

 

Historic (72 hours) wind, you can choose from your nearest weather station.   Perhaps (if I am remembering where you live,it might be this one.

 

https://www.bom.gov.au/weatherstation/australia/new-south-wales/68192. This is on the new site. From here, you can get the same 72 hours past the temperature, rain  humidity or you can combine all of those things into one page.  

 

On the main page is the current wind speed and direction.  You get this by clicking the wind button between the temperature and humidity buttons.   This gives you information from the last recorded observation.  In the case of data from 10 minutes ago and the forecast for future winds was generated  32 minutes ago.

 

36 minutes ago, old man emu said:

here is the website my son created for a business that started from scratch recently.

With the greatest respect to you and him, there is a massive difference between a business site and a sit like BoM.  A business website can be manually updated as new information becomes available.  The BoM site must update automatically, things like Temp, Rain, Humidity, wind speed and direction, etc This makes it much more problematic. 

 

My son's partner is a UX person, this is the person who designs how these sites work.  Her last contract was with the NZ Lands Department. The problem is that several separate data sets, for example, own the land, the history of ownership and most importantly, earthquake risk and past works on the land, such as excavation and filling, etc.   This may sound easy, but it his a highly paid, complex job 

 

I think that some people are infuriated because suddenly it is different. I get it I share that frustration. I will bet that when the old site came online, people complained.

Look, I am not saying you must like it, but when someone says that a particular set of information is no l; longer available when clearly it is that is a different matter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[old man emu]

12 minutes ago, octave said:

A business website can be manually updated as new information becomes available.  The BoM site must update automatically

I agree that the BOM site must update automatically, as opposed to a business site that has a longer update period. That is not what is wrong with the new BOM site. It is the both the site navigation and display that are poor, leading to inconvenience.

 

I've moved. This is my local data: https://www.bom.gov.au/location/australia/new-south-wales/central-west-slopes-%26-plains/o245094990-gilgandra

 

 

I grant that an improvement is that the weather station providing the data is now Dubbo, not Brewarrina, 250 kms away, which it was previously. 

[octave]

Sorry to be a little tedious about this, but this is my observation about the new local page in this case, Gilgandra.

 

https://www.bom.gov.au/location/australia/new-south-wales/central-west-slopes-%26-plains/o245094990-gilgandra

 

There appears to be a wealth of information on this page that, in the past, needed you to click through to other pages.

Here comes the tedious bit - you have been warned!

After the place name, we can choose to look at today, the next 7 days forecast and the past (72 hours) 

The current temp, the feels like temp a general forecast for heavy rain. Under that, we have the predicted max and overnight min.

Next to that, we can click on the radar and weather maps (or we can scroll down.

We have a predicted rainfall (looks like you should not put the washing out)

Next choice of temp and rain, wind, humidity or show all of these things (the choice is yours)

We then have an hourly forecast for the temperature and rain.

Under that, the weather maps for rain, wind, temp  or more weather maps ( I won't bore you with those choices)

 

What is missing on this page? 

 

There has been a lot of talk about the radar map.    This is one of the things that, to me at least, seems like chalk and cheese.   The new map can easily be maximised to full screen as opposed to the old one,which is tiny and can only be enlarged on your phone with a loss of resolution (unless I don't know how, happy to be schooled on this)

 

A couple of days ago, I posted links to the radar sites from the weather services.  

 

USA -   large size zoomable and draggable

UK met - large size, zoomable and draggable

European met - large size, zoomable and draggable

Australian BOM (new), large size, zoomable and draggable

 

Australia's old BOM site does look pretty antiquated and small, and can only be navigated between preset zoom levels and by sidestepping to the next radar station.

 

2 hours ago, old man emu said:

It is the both the site navigation and display that are poor, leading to inconvenience.

Is it objectively poor or just slower until you get to know it?

 

 

[facthunter]

I would assume the LARGE number of people who are Not impressed were regular users of the Older site. I get the feeling there's a lot of AI in the New set up. . From the Other version you could see what's going on and work out why it was as shown. Even then there was less observation stations and atmosphere readings than in earlier days. Computers drew the Isobars resulting in some Pretty WONKY looking traces  as you got a few days ahead.. Pilots regularly gave weather reports Prefaced XYZ AIREP. Ready to copy?  Met never was held responsible for forecasting errors and the Accuracy at lower TAS and heights was more critical. Any experienced Pilot of RPT would have been caught by it at some stage and do some quick re organising of where He would go. Nev

[octave]

26 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I would assume the LARGE number of people who are Not impressed were regular users of the Older site.

There is a well-known phenomenon whereby whenever there is a change to a website (or pretty much anything else) many people find it temporarily unsettling. You only have to think about the history of these forums.  When there has been a rejigging of these forums, there have been several people who didn't like the change and wanted to go back to the old system.  Then, sometime down the track, when more changes are made, this existing system becomes the one they mourn.

 

Of course, the new system may feel temporarily more awkward to use.    I can relate to this; many of the software packages I use are regularly updated. The user interface often needs to be updated for functionality or to take advantage of improved technology.

 

Most of us are not good at remembering our past experiences with using sites.   I would imagine that the first few times we used the old  BOM site, we probably found it difficult and not very intuitive.    I am very open to real criticisms, and I am sure it is not perfect; however, most criticisms seem to be around things being in a different place.  It just takes a little time to get used to it. The alternative is the freeze it as it is. 

 

I believe that the opposition to the new site is being stoked a little by the media, which loves a controversy.  I saw somewhere, I can't remember the news outlet, that was asking people who were outraged to contribute. Some of the complaints are laughable.  I read where a woman was outraged because she believed they had taken away the buttons on the radar map (64km 128km etc). Yes, they did, but they did replace them with an infinitely adjustable zoom function (between biggest and smallest). Someone here, I think, complained of the colours on the radar map. I would suggest that whatever colours you choose, you won't please everyone.

 

Anyway, as I say, the phenomenon is well known.  

 

"According to researchers, the main reasons behind resistance to change are perceived loss of control and perceived dissatisfaction.

Familiarity bias is another reason people dislike redesigns. It refers to a mental phenomenon where people opt for the more familiar options, even though these often result in less favourable outcomes than available alternatives. Familiarity bias was first described by Daniel Kahneman and it’s a well-documented heuristic (shortcut) our brains take that makes us prefer familiar experiences.

The Endowment Effect is a concept in behavioral economics that refers to how people tend to assign a greater value to an object that they own, rather than an object that they don’t. In the case of the redesign, this phenomenon can lead users to prefer the existing version and experience aversion towards the new one. The status quo bias is another cognitive bias similar to the endowment effect; people have a preference for the current state of affairs. More specifically, people tend to accept and prefer the default option instead of comparing the actual benefit to the actual cost. As a result, even if the redesign is ultimately improving user experience, users will — at first — show a preference for the design they’re used to."

 

https://uxpsychology.substack.com/p/why-do-people-hate-redesigns

 

 

 

 

[kgwilson]

This is easier.

 

Rain tomorrow? 

 

Nah Sunny

Maybe a few Spits, nuthin to worry about

A bit likely accordin to the metolg, metereolger metologist, Rain PREDICTOR BLOKE. Keep the brolly handy

Probably coz it's gettin cloudy & windy but it might not.

Yeah it's gunna piss down. Take the day off.