WEATHER forecasters are being blamed for costing Dorset towns millions of pounds a year with “negative” forecasts.

The Met Office and the BBC forecast constant thundery showers on Bank Holiday Monday – which turned out to be the hottest day of the year.

Although temperatures hit 22C, many visitors stayed away because of the rainfall that never came.

Last summer, the Daily Echo monitored BBC forecasts over 25 days and found them to be wrong on 15.

Mark Smith, head of Bourne-mouth council’s tourism department, said: “We do suffer badly from inaccurate weather reports.

“On Bank Holiday Monday alone, we lost 25,000 visitors because the weather forecast was so poor.”

The forecast was for thundery showers throughout the day but after 9am it remained bright and sunny and was the hottest day of the year so far.”

The average amount spent by visitors per head is £41, so even for one day that cost us over a million pounds.

“We seem to have the Michael Fish effect – they don’t want to get it wrong or be caught out by bad weather.”

Bob Cotton, chairman of the Tourism Alliance, is urging weather forecasters to take more care with their “negative” predictions.

Helen Chivers, from the Met Office, denied they were being cautious but admitted they got the weather wrong for Bournemouth.

She said: “Bournemouth had temperatures of 22C on Monday which made it the hottest day of the year so far.

“The forecast was for a bright start, clouding over with showers heavy and thundery in places during the morning and continuing throughout the afternoon.

“We get observations from satellites and local stations and all of that goes into the computers, and you take the best guidance out of that.

“For the weekend we were looking at developments over France and they had some particularly nasty thunderstorms.”