Australia Weather News

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has sparked a storm of outrage after unveiling its new website.

Billed as a "modern and sleek" update, the new website went live on Wednesday as a fatal storm prepared to batter the country's south-east.

The public forecast turned ugly, fast.

The redesign was meant to make weather information clearer and easier to access.

Instead, it has clouded public sentiment.

'Not happy BOM'

The new website launch coincided with wild weather and extreme heat across Australia.

The feedback was harsh, as text messages to the ABC's various state-based editions of the Country Hour attest.

"The new BOM site is unbelievably useless."

"NOT HAPPY BOM."

"BOM site is garbage and completely not useful anymore."

"After pressing twenty different options I gave up and hit my phone with a hammer."

"It's telling me there is no information for my area. I'm in Korumburra (Victoria), checked Inverloch and no info there either. That's crazy."

"WHYYYY do so many organisations make so called "upgrades to websites" that are completely not user friendly."

Old site was 'outdated'

BOM's senior meteorologist, Miriam Bradbury, said the new website housed the same old information.

"The forecasts and warnings that you were accessing on the Bureau's old site, they're still available on the new site," she said.

Ms Bradbury said the previous website was outdated and needed to be refreshed.

"We were getting a lot of feedback from the Australian community explaining ways that it could be improved, commenting that it was looking quite tired," she said.

"Hopefully it'll bring our website into 2025 looking much more modern, much more sleek, and it's got a couple of new features."

Critical service

When Townsville commercial fisherman Nathan Rynn checked the website from his fishing boat, he was disappointed.

"We are very heavily reliant on those radar sites to be able to make the call or invest time to go out," he said.

"We couldn't see the kilometres per hour on the radar and the direction of the wind."

He said he has heard concerns from other fishers and sugarcane farmers in North Queensland, who are similarly upset.

"I've seen on social media, people are pretty annoyed by it leading into storm season," he said.

"We're very disturbed why it was changed to this new system that seems way harder to navigate and doesn't provide you real-time data."

Michael Overington, a sheep and cropping farmer from Moyston in south-west Victoria, said the new design came as a shock.

And not a good one.

"I'm very disappointed with how the BOM has done this, for sure," he said.

"If you're a spraying contractor, or haymaking contractor, or shearing, you're very dependent on the weather and knowing if there's any rain or wind coming."

North east Victorian farmer Stuart Barber knew the new website was changing and had been looking forward to it.

On Wednesday, he was hoping to track the incoming storms to know whether he would need to move a flock of freshly shorn sheep.

"With the weather fronts coming through, it's really important for us to be able to manage the (animals') welfare and health," he said.

"Trying to find what the observations were on the current site (was) challenging."

BOM encourages feedback

Ms Bradbury acknowledged the timing of the new website launch wasn't great.

"Rolling it out had to happen at some point, and unfortunately, it's just fallen when we've got a bit to talk about across the country," she said.

"We understand that it's really sort of confronting when something that potentially you use every day … suddenly changes."

BOM is encouraging anyone with concerns to get in touch.

"We really just encourage you to explore it, have some fun, look at the new things that you can find on this site," she said.

"By all means, leave us some feedback."