Buienradar forecasts 40C temperatures and hurricane winds due to error

Many users of the Dutch weather app Buienradar were surprised to see temperatures of 40 degrees celsius and hurricane-force winds forecast for August 15. The weather service has since announced that this was not an accurate weather prediction, but rather a technical malfunction of the automatic 14-day forecast.

40-degree temps and hurricane winds incorrectly forecast for August 15

With the rainy weather in the Netherlands on the weekend, many people were looking ahead at weather forecasts on Buienradar to see if better summer weather was on the horizon. While there were some noticeable improvements with temperatures rising above a mild 20 degrees celsius for the first time in a while, what really caught users' attention was the spike to 40 degrees predicted for August 15.

Not only were sizzling temperatures forecast, but the same day would also see a wind force of 12, which would indicate a hurricane. The Dutch weather service was informed of the extreme prediction and released an announcement on their blog that the weather forecast for this day was incorrect, and was caused by a technical error.

Technical error results in extreme weather forecast for the Netherlands  

“There's a problem with the automatic forecast based on weather models on our website and in our app. At Buienradar, we don't manually enter these detailed hour-by-hour figures for every city in the Netherlands, and even the entire world, because that would take far too long,” wrote Buienradar. Various weather models are used to fill in weather data automatically.

The weather service noted that the rest of the 14-day forecast appeared to be correct, only the extreme weather for August 15 was incorrect. Rather than 40 degrees, people living in the Netherlands can expect a more comfortable 25 degrees celsius on the Friday in August - without the hurricane winds, of course! The error has since been corrected on the website and the app.