There are a plethora of weather sites on the internet, some better than others. The UK has complex weather system and it often helps to use several sites to get a good overview of what’s happening in the mountains.

Typing ‘weather’ or ‘mountain weather’ into a search engine won’t necessarily bring up the most useful sites. This article offers suggestions for some of the most useful UK weather sites that can be used to plan your next trip into the mountains.

The Mountain Weather Information Service

This is one of the best sites for mountain weather. Next day forecasts are released for all the main UK mountain areas after 4pm. The forecast is available as a PDF which can be easily printed if required. Useful information includes the wind speeds, chance of rain, chance of cloud, air clarity and freezing levels.

The Animated Synoptic Chart is very useful for planning a few days ahead if you have a basic knowledge of reading weather charts.

There are ads on the site but at least they are relevant to climbing and hill walking.

Web usability Rating: 5/5

The Met Office

As you might expect, The Met Office site has all the information, although site usability is not great in my opinion. You can get a reasonably accurate 3 to 5 day forecast with an hourly animated breakdown for the next 2 days. You can also isolate the forecast for rainfall, pressure, cloud, wind and temperature all of which might be useful depending on what you have planned.

The ‘Mountain Area’ forecasts are not particularly useful. They use a set list of hazards such as ‘Heavy Snow’, ‘Gales’ etc. and rate them by risk from Low to High.

The Met Office site is heavy on irritating display ads for cars and other junk you don’t need which is surprising seeing as we’re all funding the site as tax payers.

Web usability Rating: 2/5

BBC Weather

The BBC uses data from the Met Office but present it in a more readable form. Weather, temp, and wind are all listed in 3 hourly breaks for the next 24 hours on a single page. The layout is similar for the 5 day forecast.

No advertising.

Web usability Rating: 4/5

Metcheck

Metcheck has a similar layout to the BBC with the added advantage that you can see a 3 hourly break down for the next 48 hours on a single page. Additional information includes UV, rainfall in millimeters, cloud cover by percentage, wind speed and maximum gust speed.

Handy text links on the left tool bar give you a 3 click route to the weather in any part of the world meaning you can look up holiday destinations quickly.

Another extremely useful chart on the Metcheck site is the atlantic jet stream. Weather fronts follow the jet stream so this is a good a way to get a good picture of what is likely to be heading our way over the next few days.

There are ads on the Metcheck site but they are mainly Google text ads which don’t unduly slow the page load time or have any other annoying habits such as flashing and blinking.

Web usability Rating: 4/5

Metvuw

Metvuw present a lot of satellite imagery. Their rainfall charts are very useful, giving a 6 hourly progression of rainfall. The heaviest rain is represented by the brightest colours.

The Google ads are a bit of a con because they look like in-site links which means that if you click on ’14 Day Weather Forecast’ for example, you jump off to a completely different site.

Web usability Rating: 3/5