Quite simply, everything else out there is completely inaccurate. Accuweather, Weather Underground, and all the international weather sites source their data from a single one of OUR pre-forecast model runs. We would NEVER publish that data to end users - it's a first rough cut of the high level systems, and has almost nothing to do with what happens in your town. After sharing that data with WMO met offices around the world (we get theirs, they get ours), we combine the results with 5 other local model systems, and then hand the complete set of data over to locally based weather forecasters. These are the guys who know everything about their region's topography, and do forecasts that models simply cannot do. It's the same way it's done all over the world; no single country would even dream of using the shared international model runs to do a local forecast.
Here's a brief list of what SAWS, and only SAWS, has exclusive access to:
* National radar network (how anyone can predict anything without radar is just laughable)
* National lightning detection network
* 5 regional offices
* A very large team of forecasters, each with regional knowledge of topography (eg CT mountain! Imagine modeling CT as a smooth globe!!)
* Numerous model runs which forecasters use for various systems (rain is done from a different model to humidity which is different from wind etc)
SAWS is Africa's only met office accredited by the WMO to do Africa-wide forecasts. No one else does it. So, when accuweather allows you to enter your exact geographic position to get a forecast for Dainfern being 8km away from Lanseria, they are doing an interpolation between the grossly inaccurate JHB forecast they have, and the grossly inaccurate PTA forecast. Just because they can show the current conditions of Lanseria (pirated from our realtime WMO data feed), it does not mean they have a forecast for Lanseria. We do. We own the weather station there, and we're required to do a very detailed forecast for that airport.
Don't believe us? Just watch our forecasts for a while and then decide. It'd be laughable...if it wasn't serious!
PS: Right now, eTV do not source from us, nor does Weather24, nor does DSTV weather channel. They all prefer to use the free feeds. So if you want an easy comparison, just watch any of those channels and compare to our forecasts, you'll quickly get the idea.
