By Jo Nova
Everyone’s new favourite Bureau of Meteorology page is the old one (reg.bom.gov.au)
UPDATE: People don’t seem to realize this is the golden link (above) to the old BoM site. You can remake your bookmarks. Eg: The Old Rain Radars.
UPDATE #2: Good news! The BoM has decided to keep the old radar style, but allow people to choose the mm/h newer style if they want. Sounds like a choice!
Despite 4 million dollars and 18 months of beta testing the new BoM website was met with anger and dismay and accusations that they put lives at risk by rolling out big unnecessary changes just before the storm season begins in the north.
The new design radiates smug condescension. They are the experts and you are the kindy kids. The headers are done in 100 point font, with acres of screen-space used to convey almost nothing at all, apart from the temperature of the capital city near you. The BoM, apparently, thought this is what Australians wanted — “the temperature now”. Except that most people with a computer or a phone can see the temperature in the task bar or home screen. If only someone had told them “there’s an App for that” they could have saved the money.
Across the top of the home page is a giant message for four-year-old taxpayers — “Discover Your Weather”. The BoM are the authority and you, a crusty old farmer/brickie/businessman, have never known weather before.
This headline is designed to remind you of how stupid you are
It “feels like” Dick and Dora would like to teach you about clouds today.
If it grates on you, there’s a reason.
The feedback has been so bad even the federal Labor government is demanding answers.
But really, it’s your fault and you need to adjust faster:
The BoM’s top man acknowledged ‘some’ people (i.e. the stupid ones) will take time to adjust. In other words, they are sorry, not sorry.
The BoM’s CEO, Dr Peter Stone, said he recognised the unpopularity of the changes.
“We didn’t make the change lightly and we appreciate that it will take time for some to adjust. I sincerely apologise for the challenges the change has caused,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.
Because they live off constant taxpayer funding, the BoM don’t realize out in the real world, the hours Australians spend learning how to use a new website costs real money. All the knowledge millions of Australians had of how to find meteorological-data has been tossed to the wind. The BoM just drained 10 million hours of productivity from the country.
One of reasons for the change is that the “upgrade was overdue”:
“The old website served us really well, but it had been well over a decade since there has been any upgrades to it,” he said.
So? It’s as if a ten year old site simply had to change because there was grant money to spend and no one had spent it yet, right? The old public service axiom.
Compare the new site to the old. In the same space on the home page, the old site has a satellite map, temperatures, wind direction, wind speed, max and min temperatures, and rainfall in mm. There are one click links to warnings, forecasts and observations. That’s about 50 times as much information.
Many people are especially unhappy about the rain radars
Some people in Queensland were up in arms when storms hit a few days after the new site opened, and the rain radar appeared to be underestimating the intensity of the rain. Below is the old and new versions of the same rain patterns at the same time around Brisbane last night just for comparison.
The designers have added a white halo around the town names to improve readability on a busy background, but it makes the town names stand out which obscures the rain. Kinda defeats the point…
Old Radar page and the New radar BOM. The two scales are not exactly the same (they don’t have the same menu options).
The new site works a bit better zoomed in.
Up closer, Brisbane to Caloundra 2:20am
The two color scales appear to be the same in the key (below). But the colors are applied in different conditions. According to Steve Turton, the old radar site uses radar reflectivity units (dbz) while the new one uses a rainfall rate in millimeters (mm/h). Rainfall that appeared black in the old scale was only red in the new scale. Hence people got a nasty surprise because they underestimated how heavy it was.
Steve Turton also says the Doppler wind function is gone:
Farmers and fishers have been frustrated by the disappearance of the Doppler wind function. On the old site, this function was a vital way to track the intensity of winds associated with supercell storms, cold fronts and tropical cyclones.
In hilly regions such as the area between Cooktown and Townsville, local weather radars are essential as a way to give residents and farmers a better way to see rainfall. But in the new update, some areas appear to have been completely wiped from the radar view. Places such as Cape Tribulation – one of the wettest locations in Australia – can no longer access this crucial information.
Around Broome last night the oncoming rain looked remarkably different in the two radar displays. The vast rain dropping north of Bidyadanga almost disappears (as does Broome itself, in the new radar, oops).
Broome rain radar — old and new
Let the BoM (and your MP) know what you think. The BoM wants your feedback they say:
Customers and the community can continue to provide feedback via:
•On-page: Customers can submit anonymous feedback using the feedback pop-up window or the ‘Was this page useful’ button at the bottom of every page.
•Contact form: Customers can submit feedback and enquiries on the new website’s contact form.
•Phone line: Customers can call 1300 754 389 for website help (operating hours 8am-6pm AEDT weekdays).
The BoM are too detached from real Australians:
The real problem seems to be that the BoM is a long way from any accountability or competition in anything it does. They got away with hiding their methods, making huge adjustments to data, throwing away data, not being honest about the uncertainties they are dealing with, and using electronic equipment that records “one second records”. At times they have made flagrantly bizarre and radical changes to our historic data, or homogenized data from 1,500 kilometers away. Sometimes, they pretend the 1800s didn’t happen (don’t mention the Federation Drought or all the times it was 50 degrees Celsius in Australia).
It appears they think taxpayers are simpletons. (Perhaps because 69% of them don’t believe in the BoM’s favourite climate religion?) Wrapped up in their inner city enclaves, many BoM staff may have never met a real farmer. Yet farmers are businessmen who make a living out of placing bets of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the weather every year. And fishermen and firemen sometimes risk their lives.
Who were testing the beta site for 18 months — not farmers, firefighters and fishermen?
h/t Geoff D, J.J. Peter C, Vicki, David Maddison, Old Ozzie, Yarpos, Ronin, OzFred
THE BOM LIST grows — Scandal after scandal
- BOM Scandal: One second records in Australia — how “noise” creates history and a warming trend
- Another BOM scandal: Australian climate data is being destroyed as routine practice
- Australian Bureau of Meteorology caught erasing cold temperatures
- Two-thirds of Australias warming due to “adjustments” — according to 84 historic stations
- The mysterious BOM disinterest in hot historic Australian Stevenson screen temperatures
- The lost climate knowledge of Deacon 1952: hot dry summers from 1880-1910
- 1953 Headline: Melbourne’s weather is changing! Summers getting colder and wetter
- The mysterious lost record hot Sunday in Bourke, did it really happen?
- Wow, look at those BOM adjustments – trends up by two degrees C!
- Australian BOM “neutral” adjustments increase minima trends up 50%
- Was the Hottest Day Ever in Australia not in a desert, but in far south Albany?!
- Hottest summer record in Australia? Not so, says UAH satellite data
- Mystery black-box method used to make *all new* Australian “hottest” ever records
- Threat of ANAO Audit means Australia’s BOM throws out temperature set, starts again, gets same results
- Australian Temperatures in cities adjusted up by 70%!?
- Magically correcting Australia’s thermometers from 1,500 kilometers away