Public complains to Met Éireann about 'wildly differing' temperatures during heatwave

Ken Foxe

The public complained to Met Éireann about wildly differing temperature forecasts during the summer’s first heatwave, including one that gave a 10-degree difference for the same town.

A weather watcher checking conditions in June was told it would be 26 degrees and sunny when they searched for ‘Tralee, Co Kerry.’

However, entering only ‘Tralee’ produced a forecast of just 16 degrees and cloudy conditions on the same day.

In response, Met Éireann said its regional forecast at the time was predicting highs of between 26 and 31 degrees right across Munster.

The weather service suspected the lower temperature reading was an error or old data that was held on the user’s device.

Another person in Cork complained that Met Éireann’s website was routinely showing temperatures of only 15 or 16 degrees while other forecasts were suggesting highs of 25 to 27 degrees.

They said the problem had persisted for months and claimed the website was displaying almost identical temperatures “day and night” despite much warmer conditions.

A separate complaint asked whether they would be better off deleting the Met Éireann app altogether after it predicted a less than five per cent chance of rain only for heavy rain to fall while they were cutting their grass.

They asked whether AccuWeather or “the guy in Carlow” might be more reliable.

Another complained of the lack of a wind warning on a blustery day in June, saying they had seen calmer days in November and that it was “not good enough.”

A Met Éireann response said: “While unseasonably breezy, the wind is not forecast to reach levels considered strong enough to trigger weather warnings.”

One person was unhappy with the colours the meteorological service used for recording how hot it was.

They said nine degrees was marked yellow, which was “not warm” and that anything below eighteen degrees should be a shade of blue.

“It has been very confusing to understand the weather at a glance since the temperature colours changed some time last year,” said their message.

In response, Met Éireann said the colour scheme used had been changed in 2022 but that they would be happy to review the feedback.

Another lamented the fact that one page of the Met Éireann app contained no fewer than five spelling errors.

They wrote: “Not the end of the world I know but should be spell-checked at least.”

A Met Éireann response said: “Apologies for the spelling errors in the Farming Commentary issued yesterday. It has since been updated to fix those on the app and on our website.”