Confusion over the new Bureau of Meteorology website came to the fore on Monday night, as Sydneysiders searched for information on the storm that ripped through the city as commuters made their way home and families sat down to dinner.
A short but intense storm brought rain, flash flooding and hail, while winds reached 105km/h at Western Sydney Airport and 95km/h at Wattamolla. Planes were circling in a holding pattern around Sydney Airport and out to sea waiting for a safe time to land, as seen on FlightRadar24.com.
Looking east from Kirribilli as the storm goes out to sea.Credit: Louie Douvis
In Croydon Park, emergency services workers rescued people from a car that was trapped under a fallen tree and fallen powerlines.
The State Emergency Service fielded 400 calls for help statewide overnight, mostly following fallen trees. Of more than 250 jobs logged statewide, more than 220 were from Greater Sydney. Sutherland Shire was the busiest area with 130 jobs, an SES spokesperson said, followed by Liverpool, Fairfield and the inner west.
Yet many Sydneysiders reported that they did not get an indication of the severity of the storm from the Bureau of Meteorology website.
When the new website launched two weeks ago, the weather bureau was widely panned for losing functionality and ease of use. One of the most-hated changes was the new colour scheme for the radar, which made storms seem less threatening.
Residents in Sutherland Shire reported 130 incidents including downed trees to the NSW State Emergency Service overnight.Credit: SES
Last week, the new website garnered national attention when Queensland Premier David Crisafulli called it “flawed” and blamed the loss of functionality for not allowing residents in the state’s south-east to adequately prepare for wild storms that left 100,000 homes without power. It also drew criticism in Victoria, which was also hit by extreme weather soon after the website relaunch.
Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt then called in bureau chief executive Peter Stone for a meeting and urged him to consider feedback and adjust the site if necessary. On Friday, Stone said the website would revert to the old radar colour scheme immediately.
Yet on Monday, several users reported finding radar maps with the new colour scheme when they searched for “sydney weather radar” and then needing to click through several steps of the bureau’s site to see a version with the old colours. In fact, they were swept up in the confusion broadly caused by the site changes.
Since the zoom functionality on the radar is another widely disliked feature on the new site, many people are turning to search engines to try to find a more familiar version of the radar.
A lightning strike off Dee Why Beach.Credit: Danielle Smith
The problem is that while the Bureau of Meteorology is the top search result for “sydney weather radar”, it doesn’t take you to the radar. Instead, it takes you to a map on the still-live old website, showing how much rain there has been in the past hour. From there, you can click through to the radar, also on the old website.
It is not clear whether this is a Bureau of Meteorology problem or a Google problem, nor is it clear how long the problem has existed. But the label that says it’s the rain map is in such small print that many users might miss it altogether and assume, given recent publicity, that it is the radar in new colours.
It highlights the confusion that ordinary people face in simply trying to get information about their local weather. This is a longstanding problem – the old website was also not very user-friendly – but it has come to a head in the past fortnight.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Meteorology said: “Forecasts and warnings are the primary means by which the bureau provides advance warning of severe weather, such as storms. These are prominently displayed on the landing page of the bureau website.
“Radar images, such as those provided on websites, provide situational awareness of the current situation, and are not a substitute for a warning created by expert meteorologists, such as those that appear on the bureau website.”
correction
An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that a map showing rainfall in the past hour was a radar image.
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