One of the UK’s largest and most visited attractions, Chester Zoo, is leading a nationwide push to change how weather forecasts are displayed on popular apps - warning that misleading rain icons could be costing some venues up to £137,000 in a single day.

The zoo has coordinated a joint approach to the Met Office on behalf of more than 80 outdoor attractions, including the Eden Project, RHS Gardens, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Blenheim Palace, arguing that a single raincloud icon summarising a 24-hour period can create the impression of a washout - even when much of the day is dry.

Operators say families often make decisions based on a quick glance at a phone screen. If they see a raincloud, plans are cancelled.

Tourism contributes £147bn annually to the UK economy, with domestic day trips worth more than £50bn. Attractions say spontaneous visits are highly weather-dependent, and research suggests around 70% of people check forecasts before heading out.

Some sites report attendance dropping by up to 30% following an unfavourable forecast.

The group stresses it is not challenging forecast accuracy - but how the information is visually presented, particularly by third-party apps that may show overnight rain as an all-day rain symbol.

Dom Strange, Chief Operating Officer of Chester Zoo, said:

“When families see a raincloud icon, many simply stay home.

“The reality might be a brief shower at 6am - but the symbol suggests a washout.

“As the national zoo and one of the UK’s leading attractions, we’re speaking up for the wider visitor economy - from heritage sites to theme parks - and the thousands of jobs that depend on spontaneous visits.

“The Met Office is the UK’s most trusted weather authority and in a unique position to help lead the way on clearer forecasting so other apps follow their leads. With today’s data and technology, there’s an opportunity to present forecasts in a way that better reflects how the day will actually feel on the ground.”

Attractions are now calling for a roundtable with the Met Office, government and major weather app developers to explore practical improvements, including, separate daytime and overnight weather icons, clearer written summaries such as “showers early, brighter later” and indicators showing the proportion of expected dry hours.

Clearer presentation, they argue, would give families confidence to plan - and protect thousands of jobs across the UK visitor economy.

Olly Reed, Marketing Director at tourism consultancy, Navigate, said:

“We work with more than 50 UK visitor attractions and destinations, giving us a broad and representative view of sector performance. Across the sites we support, attendance patterns are closely tracked against forecast data and the picture is consistent - when an unfavourable weather icon appears, visits can drop by an average of around 30%.

“This is reflective of analysis across a diverse portfolio of heritage sites, gardens, zoos and theme parks. Bookings don’t just shift with the weather itself, they shift with how that weather is framed. In a sector driven by spontaneity, small design choices in forecast presentation can have disproportionate economic consequences. Credit to Chester Zoo for helping shine a light on this.”

Blackpool Pleasure Beach Resort has also backed the call for clearer forecast presentation.

James Cox, Director of Marketing, Sales & PR at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Resort, added:

“We feel it’s important to add our support to the letter to Professor Endersby at the Met Office on behalf of the UK visitor economy, and to continue the constructive dialogue on how forecast data is presented.

“In the current economic climate, we know only too well that families see a leisure day out as a considered investment, rather than the throwaway discretionary spend of old. They are cautiously waiting for all deciding factors to align to ensure their investment guarantees the best possible day out. The impact of the weather forecast is therefore intensified, particularly for outdoor attractions. A significant amount of our bookings come within 24 hours before any given day, because people rely on that weather icon.

“Accurate reports with imagery that better reflects overall conditions are vital. This will help families plan with confidence and provide greater stability for attractions and the wider visitor economy, which depend on accurate forecasting to trade successfully.”

Keepers and scientists at Chester Zoo have recorded a cassowary call that may be previously unknown to science

Female cassowaries in different zoos have now been observed making a 'booming' noise  

The call, which is discussed in a major new podcast, is sometimes too deep for the human ear to hear

This discovery could help support cassowary conservation breeding

Keepers and scientists at Chester Zoo have recorded an unusual bird call, an infrasonic sound which could help safeguard an entire species. 

This week, episode two of the zoo’s new podcast, Abi Clarke: Zookeeper in Training dropped on Spotify and other major podcast platforms. It featured Zoë Sweetman, team manager of parrots and penguins at the zoo talking all things cassowary – a remarkable flightless bird species found in Australasia. 

This is the first time the cassowary call project has been made public.

Zoë Sweetman explained: “It all started when I burst into the science office and said: ‘the female cassowary is doing something unusual’. We’d spotted that she’d changed her behaviour around the male, so we set up cameras. That’s where we saw her making a vocal posture, but didn’t know what that meant at the time.

“I searched through the scientific literature to find out what the behaviour might mean, but there was pretty much nothing.

“My colleague Mark Vercoe, general manager of the birds department, recalled a few studies from the 2000s that suggested cassowaries communicate in infrasound – in frequencies below the threshold of human hearing – but aside from these, there is not much information about that, either.”

Zoë and her colleagues wondered whether the cassowary’s poses might accompany a call that the keepers could not hear, so they installed sound recorders. 

Sure enough, the huge bird – whose ancestors have walked the earth for millions of years - was making a deep boom.  

For now, the recordings and data are being kept top secret as they will be the centre of a forthcoming scientific paper.

“We realised this was something worth researching,” said Zoë, “because it’s a lot of effort for the females to make this strange, low sound. They must be doing it for a reason. This became a full study which formed part of my Master’s. 

“We needed to make sure this call wasn’t just a one-off to Chester Zoo birds, so I expanded the study to BirdLand in Cheltenham and Avifauna in the Netherlands. We found the females there made the same call.”

These findings may improve our understanding of cassowary behaviour and aid their conservation. Existing cassowary subspecies, including the southern cassowaries living at Chester Zoo, face intense environmental pressures in Papua New Guinea, where land is being cleared for farming.

“Cassowaries are quite difficult to breed because they can be territorial outside the breeding season, which can lead to aggression between individuals,” said Rebecca Lewis, conservation scientist in population biology at Chester Zoo. “These are birds you look at and instinctively think: dinosaurs! They have long claws, and I remember watching a TV show when I was young where a cassowary kicked a hole through a thick piece of MDF. 

“We’re pretty confident the sound is related to mating. Breeding success is limited in zoos and poor timing of mixes resulting in conflict is a common issue. Understanding the calls of these birds and the part they play in courtship might help time mixes more accurately, taking the guesswork out of when to pair birds.”

Cassowaries are unusual even within a group of flightless birds that include emus, rheas and ostriches.

Zoë said: “The females are polyandrous. They pair with a male, lay eggs, and then go off to find another mate, leaving the male to care for the clutch. This is extremely rare in birds, and we think the call might relate to this, alerting males that the female is ready to mate again.

“As a species they are secretive. Even though they’re quite large, and they have brightly coloured neck wattles and a tall structure called a ‘casque’ on the top of their heads, they are surprisingly hard to spot.

“They look fearsome, but they prefer to creep off into the undergrowth rather than fight, though they are quite capable of defending themselves, and males can be aggressive if they are guarding a nest or chicks.

“After watching thousands of hours of cassowary footage, I’ve realised that they shouldn’t be underestimated. I think they are a lot smarter than they are given credit for.”

The study included physiological and endocrinological elements where scientists tested hormones in the birds’ faeces to see whether the hormones peaked in synch with their behaviours, but this was inconclusive and requires further research.

Since taking part in this study, a pair of cassowaries at Birdland have successfully hatched and reared a chick.