The UK's weather service has provided the data used for BBC forecasts since the corporation's first radio weather bulletin in November 1922.
How different those early forecasts must have been, with their lack of modern technology.
Perhaps they relied on observing the office cat washing its ears, rain gauges, ship weather bulletins and the expected climate for the time of year.
The BBC said it was legally required to secure the best value for money for licence fee payers and would tender the contract to outside competition.
I can just see other organizations gearing up their sales pitch to replace the existing company next year.
And yet, do any weather forecasters get it right?
Here in England, crews have attended 35 incidents of flash flooding in North Yorkshire. Storms, flooding and thunder have created extreme weather from the 'Spanish Plume'.
But outside my window further south in Hertfordshire, the sun's heat warms me.
It must be so hard to predict what the weather will do from one day to the next as, all over the world, the weather has gone wild.
Rains that are almost biblical, heat waves that don’t end, tornadoes that strike in savage swarms—there’s been a change in the weather lately. What’s going on?
The Economist asks:
Is the problem global warming or just the weather?
Blaming the weather on climate change might seem straightforward. The two are so closely related that the climate can be defined as the average daily weather over a long period.
Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.
- Edward Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist.
Any thoughts on the weather?