Indeed, for any spot in Europe that you care to look at, the forecast has been substantially different every day.
The weather situation is complex and impossible to forecast well. This is yesterday’s UKMO 1800 MSLP chart
Before the great visualisation which everybody now gets from windy.com, this type of chart is all we had. German pilots have their DWD charts which they believe are the best. But, hey, here is the DWD one for the same time:
and look how very different it is from the UKMO one. So even for t+24 the “best” weather offices there are cannot agree… Actually they rarely agree anyway 
In more stable conditions, wx forecasting works better. Or with simple fast moving conditions, although the faster moving the more uncertain the timing is (they tend to get the weather right; just not the timing).
My take is that the real weather sources (e.g. Metoffice U.K., France, or Germany) sell different packages at different prices to various bidders (online weather sites). The later choose how much money they can spend (e.g. based on ad revenue), while the Metoffice chooses what level of detail and accuracy they supply for that amount of money. That’s why different sites can come up with so disparate results when the situation is unstable.
Bottomline is: The satellite pictures (actual weather) may look all alike on every website, but good forecasts have a price.
Please prove me wrong 
That is certainly true for radar data, which is specifically priced according to the delay – like stock market prices
It is probably true for the wx model access but I don’t know anybody currently in the commercial wx forecasting business. @bookworm used to be in that years ago; not seen for ages so not sure if he is still around.
I suspect you don’t get differently delayed data but get access to different parts of the model according to how much you pay. For example on windy.com you get Low Cloud on ICON and ECMWS but not NEMS. So yes it is quite possible that sites that commercialise their website differently do end up with different data.
It’s all a scandal since all European wx offices are taxpayer funded. In the US the data would be free.
Looking at the wider topic of VFR wx, this is obviously totally relevant to the PPL training process.
And how much of this uses modern sources?
In the UK, they are still teaching with the horrible Form 215 and the almost as horrible Form 214. These date back to the days when men were men, gurls were gurls, life was real, and these charts were delivered to you using a faxback service!
The Arome forcast is quite accurate. Available through Windy and https://aviation.meteo.fr
Since last month is can show a VFR GAFOR like forecast (Ceiling and Visibility ) 2 days ahead.
aart wrote:
And here’s reality
Just a note, the last windy.com picture is one week later (Friday 29 rather than Friday 22 for all the others). The previous windy.com pictures for Friday 22 seem fairly close to the reality.
Peter wrote:
Form 215 and the almost as horrible Form 214
The black and white one that shows winds… naive question… how do you actually use it? It looks like flight level, wind direction, wind strength, temperature, but do you average them out across your route?
Piotr_Szut wrote:
https://aviation.meteo.fr
I use too, alongside Windy. For comparison from my PPL, Météo France WINTEM (big picture is FL020 and smaller two FL050 and FL100).
And the TEMSI:
There’s loads of overseas too, so you can look up e.g. Tahiti if you need cheering up
Just checked the satellite and radar pictures and they’re 19 minutes old – I don’t know if this is good or bad. (Edit: they’re updated every 15 mins)
how do you actually use it? It looks like flight level, wind direction, wind strength, temperature, but do you average them out across your route?
The flippant answer is that the PPL teaches you to fly a plane but doesn’t teach you to fly somewhere else
The proper answer is that you are supposed to interpolate that form and, yes, it is useless, but, yes, it has been used for decades because most instructors never go anywhere
That TEMSI form looks as horrible at the UK F215.
Peter wrote:
That TEMSI form looks as horrible at the UK F215.
Thats because its from the same era…
Maybe PPL training cannot move on because the whole system uses the same syllabus?
