Why Australians are furious with their beloved weather website

October 22 was an unseasonably warm spring day in Sydney, with a forecast of 39C (99F) – a real scorcher.

A day earlier, New South Wales state reported its hottest day in more than a century, with a high of 44.8C in the outer town of Bourke.

But the team at the National Bureau of Meteorology had no expectations that they, in particular, would feel the heat any time soon.

Affectionately known to Australians as BOM, the agency’s long-awaited website redesign went live that morning, more than a decade after the last update.

Within hours there was a flood of complaints about the bomb. The hashtag #changeitback went viral.

Problems ranged from a new color scheme for rainfall radar to angry farmers and fishermen who could no longer put in GPS coordinates to find a forecast for a specific location.

And then, this week it was revealed that the site redesign had cost approximately A$96.5m ($62.3m; £48m), 20 times more than the previously reported A$4.1m.

Psychologist and neuroscientist Joel Pearson told the BBC, describing the public outcry, “First you violate expectations by making something worse, then you compound the harm by conveying that the violation was both costly and avoidable.”

“This is the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, finding out the contractor made your house less functional, and then finding out they charged you for a mansion.”

A consensus immediately became clear: “Please bring back the previous format,” one person speculated on social media.

Another said, “It’s terrible, the most useful features are gone and it’s not user friendly. A waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Others said the timing was bad: “Why change it on a day with severe weather?”

There were a few fans, one of whom posted: “I like the new site. The first page is so neat”. But they were few and far between.

Less than 48 hours after the launch, Baum released a list of tips on how to use the new site, but it was further ridiculed by disgruntled users.

“Awesome! You shouldn’t need step-by-step instructions to navigate a site,” one post read.

With more than 2.6 billion views per year, Baum tried to explain that the site’s refresh – prompted by a major cybersecurity breach in 2015 – was aimed at improving stability, security and accessibility. It did nothing to satisfy the public.

Some frustrated users turned to humor: “As much as I love a good game of hide-and-seek, can you tell us where you’re hiding the synoptic charts or leave some clues?”

Malcolm Taylor, an agronomist from Victoria, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the new design was a complete disaster.

“I’m the one who needs it and it’s not giving me the information I need,” the plant and soil scientist said.

Others seemed to accept their fate: “I’m sure we’ll get used to it but it’s not comfortable at all.”

Just a week after the debacle, the acting head of the agency was forced to apologize. There were concerns that people were unprepared for storms in Queensland due to the poor usability of the site.

The outrage prompted the federal government to issue a strong rebuke of the bomb and order immediate changes to the site.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said at the time, “The Bureau clearly has work to do, thus it has lost community confidence in the new website.”

To calm the storm, parts of the previous site were brought back to life, giving people the option to use the old facilities.

A month after the relaunch, the new head of Baum – who began his role during the saga – acknowledged that the changes were “challenging for some” and apologized again for the confusion.

Dr. Stuart Minchin said, “Naturally, we don’t and won’t always get it completely right. But, we’re constantly striving to get better.”

But he triggered another round of criticism by revealing that the cost of the revamp was actually $96 million, a figure that included rebuilding an entire website and “testing the systems and technology” that underpins it.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the government immediately demanded Baum explain how taxpayers’ money was spent “efficiently and appropriately”.

Barnaby Joyce, a member of the Nationals, which mainly represents regional communities, said: “We spent $96 million to put a B at the end of the bomb site. It’s now a bomb, it’s disappointing.”

On launch day, Baum assured Australians that the community had been consulted on the changes. He told the BBC that a test site in the months before the relaunch found that customer satisfaction rates were consistently above 70%.

“The tsunami of complaints shows that the consultations were either carelessly carried out or they listened to the wrong people,” Mr Pearson said.

Over the years, farmers and emergency workers using the site to read weather patterns have developed what neuroscientists call “procedural memory,” he said. It’s muscle memory like touch-typing or walking a familiar route home.

“Your fingers know where the keys are, your hands know when to turn.”

But when the new site changed the radar color scale, longtime users were left scratching their heads as “the hard-earned intuition for reading a storm’s intensity became unreliable overnight”.

The new site, Mr Pearson said, was “using neurological shortcuts that people had spent a decade creating”.

“It’s like rearranging all the furniture in your house and then expecting you to carry it out in the dark without stubbing your toes. Except that ‘furniture’ in this case is determined by whether you move your animals before the flood arrives.”

For sociologist Ash Watson, the collective response to the site reflects its special status in Australia.

“Australia has always been a country prone to extreme weather, and the cultural significance of the boom has really strengthened in recent years as we have experienced more extreme weather and the increasing impacts of climate change.”

As a regular user of Baum’s site, Ms Watson acknowledged the good intentions behind the changes, but said her research on the social impact of technology had shown that people were growing tired of change.

“It can be hard for people to get excited about new updates and see their immediate benefits when they don’t want to learn how to use another new platform, app, or website.”

This is not the first time that Bam has faced a publicity storm.

In 2022, it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rebrand, including using either its full name or simply being called “The Bureau” rather than “The Weather Bureau” or “The Bomb” given the negative connotations.

But the campaign was short-lived. Ultimately they issued a statement saying that the public could use whatever name they wanted.

Mr Pearson said the incident reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of how naming culture works.

Australians have adopted “Bom” as a term of endearment, he said, like a nickname for a friend.

“When the organization tried to fix it, it felt like you were being told you were pronouncing your partner’s name wrong.”

He said the site’s redesign revealed similar “cultural blindness but with higher risks”.

In a statement, a Baum spokesperson told the BBC it had received about 400,000 items of feedback on the new site, less than 1% of the 55 million visits in the past month.

Reactions were “both positive and negative”, he said, with fans saying they liked the new design and presentation, the accuracy and reliability of the forecasts, and the greater ease of using the site on a variety of mobile devices.

But it was clear that people had “formed strong habits”, the spokesperson said, and further changes could be made based on feedback.