The weather forecast reaches end of life

The public forecast, the free description of tomorrow that arrived with the evening news for a century, would be formally deprecated under a plan now circulating among national meteorological services. The weather itself is expected to continue.

Public weather services have for decades provided free forecasts based on physics-based numerical models run on public supercomputers. In recent years, machine-learning forecast models trained on historical weather data have matched or beaten those models on several standard benchmarks while using far less computing power, and both large technology companies and startups have released such systems. Consumer weather apps increasingly blend public agency data with private models and sell premium features. At the same time, public meteorological agencies in a number of countries have faced budget pressure, and the vocabulary of software — versions, support windows, deprecation, end of life — has become a normal way of describing public services delivered through apps.

Ilona Vass, 64, is pegging a fitted sheet to the line behind her house on the edge of a small town in the plains when her phone buzzes against the peg bag. She wipes her hands on her apron and reads it standing in the wind. The message thanks her for using the national forecast, notes that support for the general forecast will end on 31 March 2040, and invites her to migrate to a personal forecast plan before that date. She looks up at the sky, which is doing something to the west. The sheet, she decides, can take its chances.

The deprecation notice, in the version seen by this magazine, would be issued jointly by the meteorological services of several countries whose forecast models were merged into a single learned system in the early 2030s. Under the plan, the general forecast — one map, one temperature, one chance of rain for everybody in a region — would be classed as a legacy product. It would no longer be maintained, patched or read out. Anyone who still wants to know what the weather will do would be asked to specify who they are, where they will be standing, and what they intend to do there.

The reasoning, as set out in the accompanying migration guide, is that a forecast for everyone is a forecast for no one. A learned model that can tell a delivery driver the exact minute the rain reaches his van has, the guide would argue, no business telling an entire county that showers are likely. The general forecast would be kept for twelve months in read-only form, labelled as unsupported, with a banner warning that it may not reflect current sky conditions. After that it would be archived. The archive would be available on request to researchers and to the very old.

The personal tiers would be priced by intention. A basic plan would cover the walk to work and the washing. A gardening plan would include frost at soil level and the drying time of a lawn. An events plan, for weddings and outdoor funerals, would carry a confidence figure and, for an additional fee, a second opinion from a rival model. Farmers would fall under a commercial schedule with penalties for shouting a forecast across a fence. One cooperative in the east is understood to have pooled its members' plans into a single account named after a tractor.

Dezső Halmi, 71, who has kept a rain gauge on the same post since he was a boy, would receive the notice while emptying it. “I have been told the weather is being discontinued,” he said, “and I have looked outside, and it is not.” His neighbour, Erika Bodó, a school cook, said she had chosen the basic plan and been asked, during setup, whether she would like the forecast delivered in a reassuring tone. “I said no,” she said. “It rains on me either way.”

Critical infrastructure would be moved to a long-term support forecast, maintained by the ministry responsible, under which power grids, airports and flood barriers would continue to receive a description of the sky for as long as they need one. The support contract is expected to run to 2055. Ordinary households are not covered by it, the working group has noted, because a household is not critical, though the guide concedes that a household may feel critical from the inside. A helpline would be provided. Callers would be asked first for their postcode and then for their reason for wanting to know.

A spokesperson for the joint service, who asked to be described only as a senior forecaster, said the change was overdue and that nobody under forty had looked at a general forecast in years. “People want to know if it will rain on them,” she said. “Not on the region.” Asked what would happen to the evening forecast on the public broadcaster, the map with the clouds drifting across it, she said a licence had been negotiated. The map would continue. The clouds on it would be illustrative.

Ilona Vass has not migrated. She has told her daughter, who rang to explain the tiers, that she has a barometer in the hall and a knee that goes before rain, and that neither has ever sent her a notice. The fitted sheet came in dry. Under the scheme she would be sent two more reminders, then a final one, and then the general forecast would simply stop, leaving in its place a page that says the weather is now available on request. The sky over her garden would carry on regardless, unsupported, at no charge.