This bug was added for those who open BBC Weather in a rush to hide the actual page they were looking at before. The hurricane news make it look more plausible that you were looking at something interesting on the weather page.
Given the chronological proximity to the real hurricane force winds in the US right now, seems fair to me to assume someone at the weather data source was testing how these values might propagate/display and the test values escaped containment?
The numbers shown can be as high as 15000 MPH - nowhere on earth has seen speeds like that.
(I hope this comment ages well).
Ah I realize my first comment is maybe not written so well. I meant to convey, it looks to me that some irrationally high dummy testing values (put there because we're seeing historically high winds and they wish to test that behaviour) were accidentally put into the production data source.
It's still showing hurricane force winds.
I guess they've decided it's better to show the correct forecast data + bad wind data than take down the page entirely.
Which is very questionable decision.
Yup, 140mph forecast here. Observed windspeed currently 2mph.
I assume by default that somewhere, somehow, AI is to blame.
More likely to be HS (human stupidity).