UK Weather Forecasts and Observations from the Met Office

Met Office data provides three-hourly and daily site-specific forecasts for approximately 5000 UK locations, with forecasts extending 5 days and updated hourly. It also includes hourly observational data from approximately 150 UK monitoring stations, recorded in real-time. The dataset was released under the Open Government Licence following the UK government's Autumn Statement 2011.

Use Cases

• Short-term weather prediction based on three-hourly and daily forecasts for thousands of locations.
• Historical weather analysis based on real-time observational data from monitoring stations.
• Comparing forecast accuracy against actual observations based on the described parameters.
• Studying local weather patterns across the UK based on the geographic coverage of stations and forecast points.

Strengths

• Forecasts cover approximately 5000 UK locations, providing broad spatial coverage.
• Observational data comes from approximately 150 monitoring stations operated by the Met Office.
• Forecasts are updated hourly and provide a 5-day outlook, suggesting regular updates.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Observational data is subject to final quality control after publication, and changes are not retrospectively applied.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Met Office, the UK's national weather service.

Collection Method

Forecasts are generated by Met Office models; observations are recorded by the UK Monitoring System.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:21.804818; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom.