Apparently 25,000 people didn't visit Bournemouth because the weather forecast was for thundery showers when in fact the weather was lovely. The tourism chief would prefer more accurate, and apparently more optimistic, forecasts!
The accuracy of weather forecasting is something that I've constantly struggled with for Shutter Scouts. Will the forecasts be accurate enough to be useful? I've certainly found them to be good enough to make broad decisions about where to go, what to photograph, and what equipment I might need. For example, a prediction of an overcast evening has meant that went out knowing that I wasn't going to shoot anything with the sky in it. Instead, I was going to concentrate on flowers and macro shots with the flat light. These forecasts have allowed me to make lens and filter choices before I've left home, which as cut down on the "what should I be shooting... hmmm... need to change lenses" process on-location.
The weather data that Shutter Scouts currently uses is certainly more accurate than what you find in the daily newspapers. Sure, it has been wrong on occasions but then blindly following a weather forecast would be like following the directions of your GPS off the edge of a cliff. It's pretty stupid, isn't is? No photographer is going believe a weather forecast when the prevailing conditions outside their window say otherwise.
I'm confident that more accurate forecasts can be aggregated and overlaid to improve Shutter Scouts considerably. Also, there are constantly evolving weather models which will improve the accuracy and scale of weather forecasts and again I'm confident that these will come online over the next few years. I could sit around waiting to build Shutter Scouts on the perfect weather forecasts but then it would never get built! By building it now I can provide a decent amount of value to other photographers, which will only increase in the future.
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