The Truth About Weather Sites - Fish Ranger

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Verdict – False. As a government agency all data produced by BoM is available to registered users; they do not keep the best for themselves. For a fee users can access the data and use it any way required. In actual fact, users of Fish Ranger in Victoria and Tasmania get better forecast data than BoM provide on their own site. This is because Fish Ranger uses individual state grid files rather than the national grid which is used to drive MetEye.

The state files for VIC and TAS have 3km resolution whereas the national file has a uniform 6km across all states. Fish Ranger’s VIC and TAS users will therefor get more detailed forecasts than by using MetEye (In other states the data sets are equal). Th e difference between a 3km grid and 6km grid is a 4 fold increase in data due to their being 4 x as many grid points covering the same area. To see the forecast as the meteorologist who created it intended, you need to be using Fish Ranger and not MetEye.

At Fish Ranger’s insistence, at Jan 2017, BoM updated documentation to confirm this fact since it was previously only known to some behind the scenes people and therefor doubted by the public. You can confirm this here:

http://www.bom.gov.au/weather-services/about/forecasts/australian-digital-forecast-database.shtml

For anyone curious, a list of data services offered by BoM can be found here:

http://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml

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