Case Study: The Met Office achieves instant scalability for weather reporting with PA Consulting and Google App Engine

U.K.’s National Weather Service tracks weather in the cloud with Google App Engine

The Met Office, the United Kingdom’s national weather forecasting service, needed a scalable online platform where weather enthusiasts and schools could submit and share observations without manual intervention during usage spikes. To meet this challenge, it worked with PA Consulting and Google App Engine to build a secure, cloud-based website that could grow with demand.

PA Consulting designed, developed, and deployed the site in five months using Google App Engine, along with Google Maps, Google APIs, and a web-based dashboard for monitoring. The solution delivered instant scalability and minimal maintenance, and the site has since collected more than 25 million weather observations from users in 136 countries, while reliably handling periods of high traffic.

The Met Office

Adrian Shand

IT Project Manager