There appears to be a great variation in vis between TAF, METAR, ARFOR and ATIS with the ATIS being the most accurate - why bother to have vis and cloud in the auto metars if it is so inaccurate.. I look at all the other data available and it does help - esp with cloud cover with satellite maps but they don't give much indication of heights. Whem I fly down to the south island its even worse - esp on the west coast wher most of the info seems to come fron the autometar. It seems pointless to have such inaccurate info when it used to be so good in the past. We are going backwards it seems. We should be able to trust the weather info we get.