I actually don’t doubt that Meteofrance has the tools (and people) to beat any amateur forecaster… the problem is they just DON’T provide it. At least not for the mountains. I too rely primarily on information I patch together from a variety of amateur sites, including meteo chamonix (which I consider to be excellent!), and this has worked far better than any info I could ever get off meteofrance.fr .
We all know weather in the mountains can vary tremendously even form one valley to another (especially near big mountains like mt blanc), and it’s certainly not the MF bulletin national that’s going to help us “know” this.
Bernard Prud’homme of the Chamonix Tourist Office (which use meteo-chamonix.com) has responded to Yan:-
After commercial dispute and the high cost of Météo France, especially for an English translation we decide to set up our own weather site. It costs us 150 000 Francs (sic) a month. If Météo France are moaning it is because they can’t take the competition.
How does Yan explains the difference between the free meteo france website and the professional one (expensive).
See on my Dutch website, the pictograms and French text forecast speak for themselves… (forecast downloaded same time, and for the same day...)
I think it is Meteo France wich plays a really dangerous game here…
http://www.rogiervanrijn.com/wordpress/?p=1774
Rogier
Montagnes Magazine (n°343) did a very good test on 3 week-ends in april, comparing the forecast from 7 websites (including meteo france) to what actually happened in 5 french mountain ranges.
Guess who never appears in the top 3?
MF should put less money in the PR and more in the R&D…
And I sure do not agree that a good service should be free as some said, but a bad one should surely not be that expensive…