The Met Office officially launched a major upgrade to its national forecasting system on 9 February 2026, bringing more detailed weather reports to residents in Wolverhampton, West Midlands.
The upgrade uses a new, Azure-based supercomputing service provided through a 10-year, £1.2 billion partnership with Microsoft to deliver higher-resolution modelling. That computing power enables more local information on rain, wind and temperature at street-to-neighbourhood scales, improving short-range forecasts so people can better plan daily travel and outdoor tasks.
Updated information is already appearing on the Met Office Wolverhampton forecast pages (which include locations such as the city centre, Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C. and Wolverhampton Racecourse). The new modelling is also designed to provide clearer warnings during periods of heavy rain, supporting the Environment Agency and local flood alert systems for the region.
Professor Simon Vosper, Met Office Director of Science, said the change “is the biggest positive step in our forecasting systems for many years” and that the improvements would make forecasts “more accurate, more useful and more reflective of real-world weather.” The Met Office has said the upgraded science is live for short-range products (0–48 hours) and on selected local pages, while full implementation of the Next Generation Modelling System will continue to be phased through 2027; some longer-range products may still use legacy model data during that transition.
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