New Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Website

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The BOM website

https://www.bom.gov.au/

is one of Australia’s most visited websites, and sits within the top 2000 most visited websites worldwide. Australians appear to love keeping an eye on the weather.

The BOM is critical to many to find information on weather forecasts and associated weather warnings, for current or past weather observations or to plan one’s life in the immediate to short term.

The ready availability of weather information is important to those who use the information to make decisions. This is where there has been significant criticism of new BOM website. The popular media is awash with criticisms about its usability, functionality and ease of obtaining basic weather information.

The new website however looks fresher than the old one, making the visual appearance more pleasing. This possibility may be considered the only real improvement to the website.

1. What do you think of the new BOM website?

2. Do you think it is as easy to use as the old one?

3. Can you easily find the weather information you are after?

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Government is paying attention even if BOM managers have pushed back.

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A bit over the top about lives at risk, but it is not friendly in many ways. It has more data but usability?

The BOM essentially turned off social media commenting they were getting so much ‘feedback’ but the BOM contact page form still worked even if their 1300 number was noted as being less than reliable at the moment.

It is not well laid out and cannot be sufficiently tailored to suit. It does have more information than the old one if one discovers it.

No.

After a few go’s I developed a bookmark that shows me more than I want; but the alternatives are less than I want.

I find the radar image graphics especially underwhelming.

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1. What do you think of the new BOM website?

I don’t like it. The information density per page is unnecessarily low.

2. Do you think it is as easy to use as the old one?

No, because even if you know where to go for what you want, it’s all so spread out that it takes a lot of clicking and scrolling just to read it all.

3. Can you easily find the weather information you are after?

I can find it, but as above it takes a lot more clicking and scrolling to do so.

I used to routinely use it for the current 7-day forecast for my location.

What I would now have to do to get the same level of information as I used to have in a single screenful (in a PC browser) is

  1. Click on “Show more about today” to see more than the one-liner that’s now shown by default (for Canberra today, that’s just “Possible shower.”).
  2. Scroll down to read that extra information – that is, the more detailed summary that used to what was shown by default against each day. It’s not visible initially, being off the bottom of the page.
  3. To see the rest of the week, scroll back to the top of the page to find and click on the 7 days tab (which isn’t visible unless you’re on the first screenful, and by the way doesn’t include today, so no point going straight there to begin with if you want a full week’s forecast).
  4. Click on “Expand all” and scroll down, down, down to read the details for each day. Alternatively, click on the “v” beside each day in turn and scroll down.

For me personally, it’s sufficiently annoying that I’ve stopped visiting the site, and now use Weatherzone instead.

But the mere fact that simply extracting information is now so much slower than it was could be a really major issue for other types of users.

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What I like about the new site. I used to consult two 7 day forecasts and extrapolate from them what my area’s forecast would be (I’m half way between). Now that is done for me.

Each day gives me hour by hour forecast which updates as the day progresses, rather than wait till the afternoon forecast comes out.

The radar map isn’t as pretty as the old ones, but I have tweeked the layers to include roads, rivers. What I miss are the creeks (I can find our location by the twists & turns), and ability to measure. I used to click on our location, then click on the edge of the storm and find how far away it was, and then click again on the half hour before, subtract and x2 to get speed.

The rain predicted was out last night as there was a thunderstorm. In the back paddock, where I was chasing toads, it was light, getting back to the house I got drenched. While that forecast was probably correct for the location chosen, we are still a distance from that town.

On the whole, I like the new site, it took a bit of getting used to, but means I don’t have to work my way around two forecasts and two radars, and don’t have to guess when in the “morning, afternoon” the rain is coming.

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One of my major griefs is quick URL links no longer work. For example, if one created a URL short cut for Brisbane’s forecast, it would go direct to a unique URL for the Brisbane forecast page.

Now, these quick links no longer work and using them one gets (redirection to):

https://www.bom.gov.au/search?query=Brisbane

The same applies to all other information on the BOM website, such as radars, observations, river levels/rainfall totals, forecast rainfalls, local warnings and the list goes on.

One now has to spend considerable time trying to find information which in the past was available with one click.

I personally believe weather data must be easily available. It must also be quick to find. While the new website looks more modern, its usability and functionality has gone backwards.

I personally believe BOM are trying to push users to their apps. While apps are okay, they provide limited data (forecasts, recent observations, local radar and warnings). It might satisfy some, but possibly not those who use BOM to make decisions affected by weather.

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The old site had a beta function that did that. A ‘city’ forecast. Neat, quick and well presented. Unfortunately few knew about it. One could also access the BOM digital systems Meteye interface that provided nearly-weather-forecaster’s screens. It was not easy to find and took some effort to use effectively.

My bookmark is the following and might be one to emulate? I had to start from the basic new web site and work my way around until I got to this. I do not want to see the radar all the time and have not figured out how to show the rest without the to me, poorly executed radar imaging.

https://www.bom.gov.au/location/australia/victoria/central/o2602312351-eltham

Until about near 20 years ago the BOM was managed by weather boffins who focused on function and information rather than presentation. Over the past decade they have been replaced by people with focus on form and presentation rather than function.

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Cheers, does work for our location.

And the new radar images is rectangular and harder to spatially position as about a third of the old imagery has disappeared (has been topped and tailed). It appears BOM might think weather travels only the east - west plane.

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The new BOM website is much harder to use, detailed radar information is now dumbed down, and the only way for mariners and fisherman to get the info their lives may well depend on is to work around and use the old systems

The other issue is that previous when the area daily forecast, and the area 7 days forecasts, and the marine forecasts and MetEye all for the same places in north qld very regularly showed DIFFERENT weather forecasts for very many days, then now they are still different but all on the one very large page that is difficult to work around except to keep finding workarounds to the old sites. Just highlighted the silos perhaps working on their lounges that BOM has become.

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1. What do you think of the new BOM website?

It looks like it is intended to first meet the needs of someone living in capital city urban bliss. The greater majority of Australians. Possibly a cohort who have rarely looked beyond the first page of the old site, rather than asking those who make the most significant use of the site.

2. Do you think it is as easy to use as the old one?

No - and it’s not evident why such a dramatic change was necessary. The alternative BOM App already provides a relative degree of simplicity and ease of use. To suggest it already meets the basic needs of most BOM users.

3. Can you easily find the weather information you are after?

Definitely not because the site has been dumbed down. Inappropriate for a resource which is most useful for those seeking informed details specific to their needs. I’ve never considered the BOM web site as the best place to go for a generalised weather prediction in advance of taking the lawn mower out. Although that information was there in the wordy forecasting by district and location. The App has been more than adequate.

A fear here that the BOM behind the new web page image is planing a transition to a user pays service for any wanting more than the current temperature and forecast of clouds or sunshine until sunset. Hopefully not - as the BOM is a service every tax payer’s funds have helped to develop and are continuing to fund.

Some further observations relative to how the old site was used.

My daily go to is the BOM App which I have installed on the mobile and tablet. It offers enough basic detail, elementary forecasts and a radar link to meet in the home/city needs.

When we have needed more, especially when there are major weather events or a need for data the bom.gov.au site home web page has always been essential. It was never perfect but met immediate needs once one was familiar with how the web pages had been designed and data was linked. One click on the top right labels took us straight to the Qld pages. An easy dive direct to what was important. To note this page can still be found indirectly with a bit of diving into the new site.

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In respect of weather events our local waterways have a short and fast moving catchment. Water can rise and fall metres in a relatively short period of time. There are flood level triggers on the local streams for certain heights - however these relate more to the impact on major local roads than the back blocks and lesser roads. The new web pages design came as a surprise on Tuesday. Eventually the following old style page was found after several misleading attempts on the new site. I found a web “sitemap” in a lower information bar. However to note a search using that term on the new site was returning a link about BOM sites rather than the an indexed list of web pages.

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And from this one can pull up any of the local stream level heights as well as catchment specific rainfall (unofficial rainfall data, but far more relevant than the less local official stations). Example follows taken at the time a historical record from the 22 floods. Of note that the local properties and road/s experience flooding once the local creek reaches around 1.6-1.8m (enough to cause the garbage service trucks to refuse to proceed to the end of the road which is underwater by that measure) although the recognised minor floor height is a far higher 3.25m.

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Note that the old BOM site is still (again?) up – https://reg.bom.gov.au/.

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It is, but it is a mashup of new and old unless one has kept or remembers their old bookmarks. :frowning:

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Note that existing bookmarks would have to be adjusted for the change of hostname (www.bom → reg.bom), or they’d either fail or go to the new website.

Hopefully reg.com is using the live databases and showing up-to-date information.

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Some content was beta and could only be found via search in the first instance (or if one remembered how they found it). A search on reg gets to the new web site.

reg does seem to be getting updated.

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No surprise there. The search function would be using generic website addresses.

But instead of using the website’s search, you might try restricting a Google (or other search engine) search to reg.bom (or beta.bom or whatever) by adding “site:reg.bom.gov.au” or “site:beta.bom.gov.au” or whatever (without quotes) to the search.

I use that method to find things on particular sites when their inbuilt search isn’t selective enough.

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A more measured article noting the BOM predictably has pushed back to justify what seems an introspectively built site.

Having been closer to this ‘exercise’ than most, the new site is what happens when pretty pictures seemingly dominate the user experience. Underlying security? BOM dismissed that 15 years ago as a ‘meh’ despite internal advice their systems needed an architectural ‘security-up’, although it seems they finally accepted that message and got on with it as best they could.

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It appears to be the case. In addition to this, if they possibly had engaged with users of their website, on how they use the website, possibly a different outcome would have been achieved.

Another one of my criticisms is that the old website was like a dashboard. It presented clear and simple information. Other information of interest could be easily gained by a click or two - very intuitive for users.

With the new website it isn’t clear where the information is (very bureaucratic) and one has to do a search. When a search is done, there are scores of search results with the link to information one is after buried somewhere in the list of search results. A very inefficient way to to information.

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Bang on Phil! AS a retired self employed website designer, I constantly came across (and still do) “pretty websites” that are very weak on user friendly function.

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As simple as it may be for some of us - speculation a significant cohort of BOM users likely know no more than point and click. Images are a powerful learning tool (visual memory). Familiarity is key to learning our way around. Who has not experienced confusion for the first time returning to a much altered city or urban site. A place one once knew well and now changed through redevelopment. Without recognisable references from the past finding ones way around is no longer intuitive/automatic. One needs to stop and reassess. The fewer recognisable clues from the past, changes to roads, intersections etc and we can be left lost for some time. Hopefully we relearn - adapt. How many repeat visits it might take and how flexible our minds might no longer be .. it will vary! Web sites are IMHO little different. It’s no surprise there are numerous complaints about the new BOM site.

The better news is those of us who were adept with a slide rule and reading a vernier gauge on an instrument are on the down hill run to our lithium battery powered 4 wheel scooter futures. A path likely already taken by the many who have left the BOM over past years, and leaving others to lead the way.

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An apparition a day early for the eve of the 31st Oct. Something is going seriously wrong with both the BOM App and bom.gov.au main web service. Endless spinning disc even after closing and restarting the App. To note it has already started to let loose overhead (raining big drops). One should take Beerwah as shown on the following as a local reference.

Local time now past 2pm. The BOM App is just spinning out on the weather radar map.

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There are no warnings for the area delivered by the BOM App.

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However the new Web site offered this at the same time.

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The next step the bom.gov.au NEW WEB SITE radar offers no more than how it looked 2 hours prior. To note a rather misleading commentary “About this map” suggesting observations were last updated 4 minutes prior at 2pm AEST (Happy Qld time).

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Perhaps the old site is better informed?

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Apparently it is, the image as of 2:20pm. 2-3 clicks from opening the web page depending on which viewing choice one preferred.

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PS - from the old BOM site, a meaningful warning.

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