TheRepublic2015

I believe Presentation Cartography who supply the UKMO's new graphic system is a relatively new company created by 3 ex - Metra (current BBC graphic system supplier) employees. The UKMO partnered / bought the company after dropping the ageing Metra WeatherScape system just prior to the BBC tender, it's the system the UKMO used for their BBC bid, though it was in early stages of development then.

http://www.forecasangel delightch.com/ Can't supply results as it's a paid-for service, we receive monthly results - these results compare the accuracy of all the major global service providers, including the UKMO / BBC.

Final 3... 1. MeteoGroup 2. The Weather Company An IBM company ( WSI, Weather Central, Weather Underground - The Weather Channel ) 3. Metra - current systems provider UKMO were eliminated in first round. All 3 of these service providers are highly respected global weather service companies, there's no reason why they can't provide a better service than the UKMO. MeteoGroup (London 10+ years) and The Weather Company (Birmingham 25+ years) both have UK forecast centers with experienced UK forecasters. Forecast Watch consistently rank monthly global and UK forecast accuracy % of both companies higher than UKMO.

I have worked in tv news and weather production off and on over the years, I don't think it's a big surprise that the BBC have dropped the UKMO. There had been rumours for years that the BBC weren't entirely happy with the service provided by the UKMO. I doubt his decision will not have been an easy one for the BBC, this tender process has probably been lengthy, with submissions from many bidders and this announcement suggests that the UKMO bid was not good enough to retain the business, that's the commercial reality. Knowing how important the weather is to us Brits I don't think the BBC would replace the current service with something inferior, they will be wanting a superior one. The weather industry is a very competitive GLOBAL business, I believe there are a number of companies who could replace the UKMO and do a very good, even better job than the UKMO, the biggest of these provide complete data services, meteorologists and very sophisticated tv graphics systems, some with offices and meteorologists in the UK. The companies speculated to be involved are familiar, Metra from NZ currently provide the graphical system for the current UKMO BBC service, Meteogroup seem to be a current favourite, are a big European company. There are many more - WeatherOne, Trivis, Storm Geo and the big US companies like Accuweather or The Weather Company group which is comprised of The Weather Channel, WSI, Wunderground, Weather Central. From experience and people I still know who work in weather production I believe these are the current UK tv weather providers: BBC - UKMO / Metra ITV - UKMO Channel 4 - Meteogroup Channel 5 - Weather Central part of The Weather Company group Sky - I think is StormGeo / Viz (which is a very big tv industry graphics system) S4C - Weather Central part of The Weather Company group UTV - UKMO