Hi brootstrap, since you're a specialist in this field, I'd be interested in your views... here in the uk, I am often interested in whether or not it will rain

Hi brootstrap, since you're a specialist in this field, I'd be interested in your views... here in the uk, I am often interested in whether or not it will rain in e.g. a 3 hour, 6 hour or 12 hour period. Either because I am going rock climbing, laying concrete, spraying weedkiller, painting outdoors, etc etc. Often this is very important (not just - 'oh, if only I took an umbrella today'). I have a strong impression that the ability of the uk's met office to forecast this is very poor, such that is only just worth consulting their forecasts. OK, sometimes we have settled weather and forecasting is easy (in these cases, looking towards the prevailing wind is also good). But in most cases the weather changes several times a day and the forecasts are poor. This can also be seen by e.g. checking how the forecast for a specific day changes as the day gets nearer - every day you look, it tends to have changed markedly. Also, the uk met office and norwegian met office (significantly better than the uk one, but still not so good) generally disagree with each other. I really cannot square my 10+ years of 'studying' weather forecasts and the weather with what you are saying (in the case of the uk (pennine hills of northern England)). And 'stunningly accurate' is just a bad joke. I presume that precipitation is somehow hard to model, compared to windspeed/pressure/temperature (which seem to be forecast more accurately, though I care about them much less)?