metoffice.gov.uk

Readiness by lane

Green: metoffice.gov.uk. Thin bar: Weather Forecast peer median.

Priority fixes for metoffice.gov.uk

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 0 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   Why it matters: HSTS tells browsers to use HTTPS for your host on every later visit, which removes the window where a first HTTP request can be intercepted.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Amazon CloudFront: Attach a response headers policy with Strict-Transport-Security to each distribution.

   39% of Weather Forecast peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 32 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   23% of Weather Forecast peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   Framing restricted

   Observed: The homepage did not send frame-ancestors or X-Frame-Options, so other sites may frame it.

   What to do: Send Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' (or a list of trusted origins). X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN covers older browsers.

   On Amazon CloudFront: Set frame options in a response headers policy.

   38% of Weather Forecast peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less

   Observed: The certificate from DigiCert Inc had a 198-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.

   What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.

   59% of Weather Forecast peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

What metoffice.gov.uk already does well

Practices fewer than half of Weather Forecast peers use.

• security.txt publishedsecurity.txt with a contact found.3.2% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=reject.31% of peers
• Structured data presentJSON-LD structured data found.39% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

DigiCert, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-03-04

CDN or edge

Amazon CloudFront

DNS operators

Akamai Edge DNS

HSTS

max-age 0 days

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

166 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

32 (svg 31, jpg 3)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Weather Forecast sites

• amindi.org73
• daswetter.com71
• eltiempo.es73
• ilmateenistus.ee73
• met.ie71

Weather Forecast readiness benchmark