It turns out you DO need a weatherman
January 3, 2023 3:28 PM Subscribe
DarkSky: "The World’s Best Terrible Weather App" is no more. And maybe that's for the best? "Indeed, Dark Sky’s big innovation wasn’t simply that its map was gorgeous and user-friendly: The radar map was the forecast. Instead of pulling information about air pressure and humidity and temperature and calculating all of the messy variables that contribute to the weather—a multi-hundred-billion-dollars-a-year international enterprise of satellites, weather stations, balloons, buoys, and an army of scientists working in tandem around the world... Dark Sky simply monitored changes to the shape, size, speed, and direction of shapes on a radar map and fast-forwarded those images. “It wasn’t meteorology,” Blum said. “It was just graphics practice.”"
Never was a Dark Sky user but I will admit to just sitting and watching lightning strikes in Windy. About as close as I’ve felt to being god.
posted by q*ben at 3:47 PM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 3:47 PM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
It was a really good app! Visually pleasing but also hyperlocal, precise, and accurate. Here in the UK I used to check it to see when the rain would let up for 5-10 minutes so we could walk to the next place.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:54 PM on January 3, 2023 [33 favorites]
posted by iamkimiam at 3:54 PM on January 3, 2023 [33 favorites]
Dark Sky was first, I believe, to offer a push notification to your phone “it’s about to rain, get under cover or find your umbrella”, using that radar data and localized map view and etc.
Everyone else now does this, because it’s really amazingly useful.
posted by Callisto Prime at 3:56 PM on January 3, 2023 [16 favorites]
Everyone else now does this, because it’s really amazingly useful.
posted by Callisto Prime at 3:56 PM on January 3, 2023 [16 favorites]
Comparing weather apps is something that varies by region, I've seen. At least for me, the micro-predictions were usually excellent. I used to be able to use them to walk between rain showers for lunch in Seattle.
Longer-term it's all pulling from the same sources anyhow, but it's not all uniform. The University of Washington used to run PressureNet & uWx, which used the barometers built into most phones in the last decade to provide data feedback.
Sadly, as with DarkSky getting fed into Apple, no good things built off public data can last.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:59 PM on January 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Longer-term it's all pulling from the same sources anyhow, but it's not all uniform. The University of Washington used to run PressureNet & uWx, which used the barometers built into most phones in the last decade to provide data feedback.
Sadly, as with DarkSky getting fed into Apple, no good things built off public data can last.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:59 PM on January 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Odd, never heard of it or seen anything like it. My phone has the temperature on the main screen and if you click it, you can see the next 10 days worth of weather number and maybe a bad weather picture when relevant, never needed or wanted anything more than that and sounds like this Dark Sky thing wasn't really useful for "more" anyway. I do like when you get little peeks into parallel worlds, where people know the name of their weather applications and bring them up in conversation and weave them into their lives in a notable way... or maybe I am the odd one, oblivious to an app and ritual important to billions without me ever noticing. Do the weather gods find this ambivalence distasteful or do their appreciate me not being on their case about it?
Occurs to me I live in Texas so it's just "hot" 90% of the year with the year being "kinda nice, maybe even a little chilly" with a very low number of cold or freezing days at all.
posted by GoblinHoney at 4:00 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Occurs to me I live in Texas so it's just "hot" 90% of the year with the year being "kinda nice, maybe even a little chilly" with a very low number of cold or freezing days at all.
posted by GoblinHoney at 4:00 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Another excellent product captured and killed by Apple. I really miss it on my Android phone.
No one else has captured the precise thing it does of telling you "it will rain where you are standing now in 9 minutes". There's a zillion apps which will tell you "it's going to rain in an hour in your area" but nothing as highly local and time specific. The Rain Alarm app is the best alternative I've used but it's nowhere near as accurate in my experience. Admittedly it's a bit hard to predict rain this way in Northern California, we don't have clear isolated moving rain cells the way most of the US does. I have a fond memory of being able to finish my pizza at a restaurant in St. Louis because I knew I had 11 minutes to get to my car before the rain dumped on me. It was right.
Dark Sky is an interesting example of a Kickstarter success. Their odd image analysis algorithm was a perfect match for indie crowdfunding.
posted by Nelson at 4:01 PM on January 3, 2023 [20 favorites]
No one else has captured the precise thing it does of telling you "it will rain where you are standing now in 9 minutes". There's a zillion apps which will tell you "it's going to rain in an hour in your area" but nothing as highly local and time specific. The Rain Alarm app is the best alternative I've used but it's nowhere near as accurate in my experience. Admittedly it's a bit hard to predict rain this way in Northern California, we don't have clear isolated moving rain cells the way most of the US does. I have a fond memory of being able to finish my pizza at a restaurant in St. Louis because I knew I had 11 minutes to get to my car before the rain dumped on me. It was right.
Dark Sky is an interesting example of a Kickstarter success. Their odd image analysis algorithm was a perfect match for indie crowdfunding.
posted by Nelson at 4:01 PM on January 3, 2023 [20 favorites]
I loved DarkSky and I am so sad to see it go. I live in NYC and walk a lot, and it would tell me what the rainfall would be, where I was, over the next hour, minute by minute. As iamkimiam says, it was hyperlocal and visual pleasing.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:01 PM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:01 PM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
DarkSky was the worst weather app that I kept using for the longest time. The UI was great! Everything was so nicely presented, and you could look at it and feel like you understood the weather for a moment! The problem was that the forecast was trash, at least in my area.
I eventually came to regard it as excitable and highly strung and developed a series of mental corrections. If it said it was definitely going to rain, that meant it was maybe going to rain. If it said the temperature would swing by 40 degrees, it might move by 25 instead.
These days I like Weather Underground's 10-day with all the graphs.
posted by echo target at 4:02 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
I eventually came to regard it as excitable and highly strung and developed a series of mental corrections. If it said it was definitely going to rain, that meant it was maybe going to rain. If it said the temperature would swing by 40 degrees, it might move by 25 instead.
These days I like Weather Underground's 10-day with all the graphs.
posted by echo target at 4:02 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
I used it. The interface was very spartan, which I liked, and it was the first weather app I'd used that showed the weekly forecast as something like error bars. It was genuinely a good way to absorb the weekly forecast, and it's something Apple rolled into its own Weather app.
The super-local forecasts tantalized you with the impression of knowledge but not the fact of it. Truthiness, if you will.
posted by adamrice at 4:03 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
The super-local forecasts tantalized you with the impression of knowledge but not the fact of it. Truthiness, if you will.
posted by adamrice at 4:03 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was sad to see that the app no longer functioned when I casually opened it earlier today. The program did a solid job of telling me when I could squeeze in an outdoor run.
posted by mmmbacon at 4:05 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mmmbacon at 4:05 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Weather apps always tick me off. At the office it used to be routine for people to compare the forecasts their apps gave them. Hearing people say things like "my app says it's going to rain in twenty minutes" and "well my app says the rain is going to hold off for another hour" as if they're consulting some sort of ensemble of informed forecasters was super annoying, especially since the apps are just presenting the same information scraped from the National Weather Service with slight differences in interpretation/location.
Weather Apps are just code which replaces the especially vapid guy on television* who pulls the NWS updates and puts his own gloss on them before congratulating the day's birthday centenarians. The best apps add value to the (arguably hobbled) UX of the NWS and give you easier access to the products (forecasts, forecast discussions, radar, satellite, model outputs, etc). The worst apps lull users into the completely false belief that they're doing anything to "predict" the weather.
The National Weather Service exists! And we pay for it with our tax dollars, so it's completely free! And they're really, really, really, good at what they do! And they always publish their "forecast discussion" which, though sometimes technical, gives the forecaster reasoning behind why they're predicting what they're predicting!
* Lots of television stations do have real meteorologists these days. But there are still a bunch of handsome idiots out there.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:08 PM on January 3, 2023 [15 favorites]
Weather Apps are just code which replaces the especially vapid guy on television* who pulls the NWS updates and puts his own gloss on them before congratulating the day's birthday centenarians. The best apps add value to the (arguably hobbled) UX of the NWS and give you easier access to the products (forecasts, forecast discussions, radar, satellite, model outputs, etc). The worst apps lull users into the completely false belief that they're doing anything to "predict" the weather.
The National Weather Service exists! And we pay for it with our tax dollars, so it's completely free! And they're really, really, really, good at what they do! And they always publish their "forecast discussion" which, though sometimes technical, gives the forecaster reasoning behind why they're predicting what they're predicting!
* Lots of television stations do have real meteorologists these days. But there are still a bunch of handsome idiots out there.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:08 PM on January 3, 2023 [15 favorites]
I will shed a tear for everyone who loved DarkSky and has lost it. To me, it was one of the first apps I remember as really failing to pay off on its promise. The hyper-locality never really worked for me, despite the internet’s raves. A valuable lesson, but maybe that’s it.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:09 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 4:09 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
> About as close as I’ve felt to being god.
Is it the same feeling I get using Windy.com (or the ISS live feed) as my desktop wallpaper?
posted by rubatan at 4:11 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is it the same feeling I get using Windy.com (or the ISS live feed) as my desktop wallpaper?
posted by rubatan at 4:11 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
ps if you’re running multiple screens and don’t give a hoot about your graphics card, the location map is a nice addition
posted by rubatan at 4:16 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by rubatan at 4:16 PM on January 3, 2023
If I am lucky, the worst thing about 2023 will be my beloved Dark Sky is no longer. It told me WHAT I wanted to know HOW I wanted to know it. I loathe the way Apple "integrated" it into their sorry weather app.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 4:16 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 4:16 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
I loved those notifications but I'm the rare bird who's perfectly fine getting them from the Apple weather app they're integrated into. Sorry to the folks who are unhappy about losing the app they preferred. Also sorry for the Android folks who lost them, though. I like my iPhone but I think perfectly happy for people who use other platforms (or have different preferences) to have nice things and don't get why people feel it's a competition of some sort.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 4:22 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by gentlyepigrams at 4:22 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've long used an app called Forecaster, by Boondoggle Labs. It's the same information (powered by DarkSky, apparently), but presented in a way that's so much more immediate and clear.
posted by pipeski at 4:22 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by pipeski at 4:22 PM on January 3, 2023
I think it is worth noting that the Dark Sky-isation of the Apple weather app is only available in the latest iOS 16, iPadOS 16 or macOS 13 Ventura.
If you have an older device or just haven't updated from 15 yet, then you are looking at the old app.
For me I think the new Apple weather is just as good as Dark Sky ever was and with a prettier interface.
That said, Dark Sky was never perfect for reasons described in the article.
posted by Lanark at 4:28 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you have an older device or just haven't updated from 15 yet, then you are looking at the old app.
For me I think the new Apple weather is just as good as Dark Sky ever was and with a prettier interface.
That said, Dark Sky was never perfect for reasons described in the article.
posted by Lanark at 4:28 PM on January 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Good to know that the app I found indispensable for the past few years was bad or whatever term was used. The Apple weather app is nowhere near as useful. Fuck those jerks. Weather Underground is fine? For a bike commuter, it’s so good to know when the skies are about to open up.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:31 PM on January 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:31 PM on January 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
the forecast was trash, at least in my area.
I always found their forecasts to be fine and reliable, so the linked article surprised me.
Their map forecasts obviously looked like rough models to me - when you moved the time slider forward it was just a shape moving, and I realized I interpreted that as a very rough estimate of the future, not a forecast.
Their good UI was really the appeal to me. It's so frustrating to look at other weather services and just see this dazzling dashboard of EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY WANT, ALL OCCUPYING THE SAME CHART. Metrics everywhere! Difficult to parse! Dark Sky gave me an excellent overview of the day and the week without tripping over its data, and I liked that a lot.
posted by entropone at 4:35 PM on January 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
I always found their forecasts to be fine and reliable, so the linked article surprised me.
Their map forecasts obviously looked like rough models to me - when you moved the time slider forward it was just a shape moving, and I realized I interpreted that as a very rough estimate of the future, not a forecast.
Their good UI was really the appeal to me. It's so frustrating to look at other weather services and just see this dazzling dashboard of EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY WANT, ALL OCCUPYING THE SAME CHART. Metrics everywhere! Difficult to parse! Dark Sky gave me an excellent overview of the day and the week without tripping over its data, and I liked that a lot.
posted by entropone at 4:35 PM on January 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
As a former construction professional, Dark Sky was a revelation. While it’s correct that they didn’t actually forecast the weather, what they did do was incredibly useful. I have 3 hours to pour 50 yards of concrete and grey sky’s. Can I do it now or do I wait until tomorrow? More importantly, it would give you 20 minutes warning before the sky would open up, so you could get the crew to drop everything and spread out tarps to protect the concrete you just finished troweling.
Man, at $3.99, that app was a bargain.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 4:41 PM on January 3, 2023 [45 favorites]
Man, at $3.99, that app was a bargain.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 4:41 PM on January 3, 2023 [45 favorites]
I just wish weather apps would cite/point out their sources a bit more prominently - where do the data come from, what does that mean? It'd be nice to have a beaming information icon, a quick pop-up, something, mobile or desktop. The US NWS and all the other regional weather centers across the globe do amazing work, and they need more conscious credit for justifying/support of continued funding by their host/supporting governments and organizations.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 4:42 PM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by JoeXIII007 at 4:42 PM on January 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
As RonButNotStupid notes, all the weather data is public domain. All that really matters is the algorithm applied to it. There are two big models: the Global Forecast System (US National Weather Service) and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Then there are radar analysis algorithms, like the one DarkSky created, and the proprietary one from Accuweather.
Each model is good for different things. DarkSky was particularly nice for planning photography. It could tell you if the sun would peak out of the clouds in your exact location. DarkSky’s rain prediction was iffy. I think Accuweather’s minutecast system is better for that.
Note: never pay Accuweather or use their app. The owner is a dick who lobbies to wreck public access to NWS data.
posted by Headfullofair at 4:49 PM on January 3, 2023 [25 favorites]
Each model is good for different things. DarkSky was particularly nice for planning photography. It could tell you if the sun would peak out of the clouds in your exact location. DarkSky’s rain prediction was iffy. I think Accuweather’s minutecast system is better for that.
Note: never pay Accuweather or use their app. The owner is a dick who lobbies to wreck public access to NWS data.
posted by Headfullofair at 4:49 PM on January 3, 2023 [25 favorites]
I complained about it earlier, but the National Weather Service does have a pretty darn good mobile site that gives you just about everything you need. The UI is very spartan and the radar is broken (which is why I use the pro non-ads version of NOAA Weather Unofficial) but you can save a bunch of locations and easily flip between forecasts and it's all done in-browser!
Weather Apps are big business. Companies like Accuweather makes tons of money regurgitating data and forecasts that we (the public) subsidize. And the people who make those weather apps have long been campaigning to restrict that data from the public so they can continue making enormous piles of money off the public's back.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:50 PM on January 3, 2023 [25 favorites]
Weather Apps are big business. Companies like Accuweather makes tons of money regurgitating data and forecasts that we (the public) subsidize. And the people who make those weather apps have long been campaigning to restrict that data from the public so they can continue making enormous piles of money off the public's back.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:50 PM on January 3, 2023 [25 favorites]
I miss Dark Sky because it had a great view of the next 12 hours -- a vertical bar down the left side indicated clear/overcast/light rain/heavy rain and a forecast on the right for temp. Literally no app has, on its home screen, as good a synthesis of the upcoming day in one spot without horizontal scrolling.
Because fuck horizontal scrolling just to see what the forecast is 8 hours from now.
posted by tclark at 4:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [18 favorites]
Because fuck horizontal scrolling just to see what the forecast is 8 hours from now.
posted by tclark at 4:58 PM on January 3, 2023 [18 favorites]
powered by DarkSky, apparently
I've got some bad news for you: Apple is going to turn off the Dark Sky API at the end of March. (This date has been pushed back several times but I think this time is really the end.)
The National Weather Service exists! And we pay for it with our tax dollars
Well in the US, yes. The situation with good free weather data is not nearly as good in Europe, and largely non-existent in the rest of the world. I'm sure I have some details wrong here but the US is the outlier.
Also there's a big gap between the raw data and forecast model output being free vs. a clean, clearly presented story for you about what the weather will be. There's real value-add in commercial forecasts and apps. You can see it in as simple a product as a rain radar image or as complex as a synthesis of a forecast. Not to mention Dark Sky's unique image processing based microforecasts.
While we're lamenting weather app sins, I really hate how bad Weather Underground has gotten. IBM's ownership has at least stopped the complete destruction of the service but it's still pretty bad.
posted by Nelson at 5:03 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've got some bad news for you: Apple is going to turn off the Dark Sky API at the end of March. (This date has been pushed back several times but I think this time is really the end.)
The National Weather Service exists! And we pay for it with our tax dollars
Well in the US, yes. The situation with good free weather data is not nearly as good in Europe, and largely non-existent in the rest of the world. I'm sure I have some details wrong here but the US is the outlier.
Also there's a big gap between the raw data and forecast model output being free vs. a clean, clearly presented story for you about what the weather will be. There's real value-add in commercial forecasts and apps. You can see it in as simple a product as a rain radar image or as complex as a synthesis of a forecast. Not to mention Dark Sky's unique image processing based microforecasts.
While we're lamenting weather app sins, I really hate how bad Weather Underground has gotten. IBM's ownership has at least stopped the complete destruction of the service but it's still pretty bad.
posted by Nelson at 5:03 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
DarkSky's minute-level predictions were mostly rubbish in a Florida summer, where t-storms continually froth like quantum foam. But its interface was better than Apple's app, where you have to tap tap tap to see the hourly forecast.
But since Weather Underground is defunct, I now use WeatherBug, the first paid app I ever downloaded.
posted by credulous at 5:10 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
But since Weather Underground is defunct, I now use WeatherBug, the first paid app I ever downloaded.
posted by credulous at 5:10 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
If it's not hashed out on a large printed map every night by a group of specialist meteorologists politely yelling at each other and wielding coloured pencils / pencil crayons to mark up the expected weather, it's not my kind of forecast. That's how Environment Canada does it.
Weather radar can be quite frequently terrible. It's a noisy signal with lots of interference. If you're lucky enough to live in a place that weather radar gives you to-the-minute predictions, the same could be achieved by looking out the window because your terrain is so simple.
posted by scruss at 5:21 PM on January 3, 2023
Weather radar can be quite frequently terrible. It's a noisy signal with lots of interference. If you're lucky enough to live in a place that weather radar gives you to-the-minute predictions, the same could be achieved by looking out the window because your terrain is so simple.
posted by scruss at 5:21 PM on January 3, 2023
The Dark Sky blog post about the Apple acquisition said "The Dark Sky API and website will continue to function until March 31st, 2023." Yet the website stopped working (at least for me) on January 1st. Bleh. I'm trying to get used to yr.no.
posted by brainwane at 5:25 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 5:25 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
The app was never available in Canada for some reason and I liked the website better when it was forecast.io with the animated map that you scrub through, so the current Apple weather app is a big improvement on dark sky for me.
posted by rodlymight at 5:34 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by rodlymight at 5:34 PM on January 3, 2023
it's worth noting that Apple will still be providing weather data through the WeatherKit API, which isn't limited to Apple platforms, and if memory serves from reading about it back when they announced it, the pricing is something like half what the Dark Sky API cost to use
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:42 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:42 PM on January 3, 2023
ummmm, i used darksky more than daily on my skittleMac and the Mac before it. only the website never as an app. a part of my morning planning routine. i miss it and as an Applefanboy i curse the loss of a beautiful, simple, useful part of my life.
posted by wmo at 6:01 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by wmo at 6:01 PM on January 3, 2023
I love my DarkSky app. It has been fairly accurate with my local weather at least whenever I used it to forecast weather for outdoor parties and events. Sad to see it go.
posted by ichimunki at 6:10 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by ichimunki at 6:10 PM on January 3, 2023
I miss it so much: its local forecast was super solid here in New England. And on the same screen I got temps, clouds/sun, and precipitation chance.
The new Apple weather app requires that I switch screens and tap to bring up a menu and then choose a metric to display.... It sucks.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:31 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
The new Apple weather app requires that I switch screens and tap to bring up a menu and then choose a metric to display.... It sucks.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:31 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:00 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:00 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
For the US National Weather Service, the free (gratis & open source) wX app is very nice.
posted by BenAstrea at 7:02 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by BenAstrea at 7:02 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
(On the side discussion of public weather and climate data from around the world, Environment Canada is also pretty good. Their radar views are not quite as nice as those of the National Weather Service in the US, but do come close. In my immediate region, there isn’t a high enough density of weather stations collecting information for hyper local forecasting, but between the county-level hour-by-hour forecast and the radar, I can glean a fair amount of detail, even given that I live in one of the regions of the US with the most often chaotic, hard to model and predict in advance weather, due to our location at the intersection of a variety of oceanic and atmospheric currents. Like the NWS, they also have an extensive collection of climate data.)
posted by eviemath at 7:05 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 7:05 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
(In other government divisions that don’t get nearly the love they deserve, however, the US is quite spoiled in the exceptional quality and level of detail of maps produced by the USGS.)
posted by eviemath at 7:12 PM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 7:12 PM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I don't even remember why I specifically liked Dark Sky; only that once I started using it, every other app seemed convoluted and messy and difficult to use by comparison. It barely rains here, so its main feature of precipitation forecasting was lost on me.
Carrot Weather has a "Dark Sky" view if you pay for Premium, and if you can stand the jokes. $40/year seems a bit steep though.
posted by meowzilla at 8:06 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Carrot Weather has a "Dark Sky" view if you pay for Premium, and if you can stand the jokes. $40/year seems a bit steep though.
posted by meowzilla at 8:06 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
i pay for Weather Underground (for the 15 day outlook hour by hour) and find it is really good and pretty darn accurate. Allows me to do a lot of planning around snow and when I need to get up early for snow clearing duties for the kids to get to school (makes a big difference to know if snow will start at 4am at an inch an hour or 8am at .3 inches etc), or to get to the Mountains early.
i also really like OpenSnow and it also has hourly forecasting that seems accurate and hyper localized (and they are just a fun little company - highly recommend for anyone who lives in mountains for the Daily Snow reports and insights from local meteorologists etc ), but the app is a little more heavyweight to use as a quick check of weather. Hope they split it out to a separate app / widget.
But in the Mountain West the one true weather app is Powder Buoy. Buoy popped….plan your “sick” days now!
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:14 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
i also really like OpenSnow and it also has hourly forecasting that seems accurate and hyper localized (and they are just a fun little company - highly recommend for anyone who lives in mountains for the Daily Snow reports and insights from local meteorologists etc ), but the app is a little more heavyweight to use as a quick check of weather. Hope they split it out to a separate app / widget.
But in the Mountain West the one true weather app is Powder Buoy. Buoy popped….plan your “sick” days now!
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:14 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
"When it rains, do you run from doorway to doorway, trying to stay dry, getting wet all the while? Or do you just accept the fact that it's raining and walk with dignity"
-Gedrin. 2376
posted by clavdivs at 8:28 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
-Gedrin. 2376
posted by clavdivs at 8:28 PM on January 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Zip codes are pretty hyper local so this works pretty well by using the weather.gov api if you are in the United States.
posted by metatuesday at 10:44 PM on January 3, 2023
posted by metatuesday at 10:44 PM on January 3, 2023
When I saw Apple was consuming DarkSky, I was a bit disappointed, but I am getting quickly used to the interfaces. I can even have it push notifications to tell me if it's gonna rain where my mom is, so I can send her a "ha ha" text. (She's in PHX.) DarkSky got it right just enough to matter in enough cases, and if I were skeptical, I could just look out a window. The Apple Weather app used to be pretty simple, but now that it's been DarkSkyified, I'm going to be tweaking theeeee crap out of it. I already see it doesn't keep track of some large areas of the global map.
But I am also going to mash the shit out of the NOAA app now that I know there is one, to see what I can get it to do, what with its GOES-18 imagery and all them whizzbangers and doohickeys. Weather prediction is an educated-guess scientific modeling that hey, sometimes is right, and will probably get more accurate once AI gets into it, but still it's like being an oracle on a micro-scale that Dark Sky tried to be.
I think Weather.gov is pretty well funded, and I'm glad to pay taxes toward that. I hope my eyeballs being cast more on that NOAA app, and less on the Apple Weather map, acts much like a butterfly fluttering in New Zealand and CAUSING ALL THIS FUCKING RAIN WHERE WAS IT EARLIER THIS YEAR? NOWHERE! ANSWER ME KIWI BUTTERFLIES
posted by not_on_display at 11:19 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
But I am also going to mash the shit out of the NOAA app now that I know there is one, to see what I can get it to do, what with its GOES-18 imagery and all them whizzbangers and doohickeys. Weather prediction is an educated-guess scientific modeling that hey, sometimes is right, and will probably get more accurate once AI gets into it, but still it's like being an oracle on a micro-scale that Dark Sky tried to be.
I think Weather.gov is pretty well funded, and I'm glad to pay taxes toward that. I hope my eyeballs being cast more on that NOAA app, and less on the Apple Weather map, acts much like a butterfly fluttering in New Zealand and CAUSING ALL THIS FUCKING RAIN WHERE WAS IT EARLIER THIS YEAR? NOWHERE! ANSWER ME KIWI BUTTERFLIES
posted by not_on_display at 11:19 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I found dark sky to be pretty useless in the German-speaking regions I mostly inhabit; I didn’t even know it had a rain radar until I flew to the uk, and the forecast was not great. Like the apple weather app, I could get a forecast of snow and look outside to see sun.
For my fellow Europeans, I recommend Hello Weather, which has a choice of sources - the US and American based sources do very poorly in my area, so it’s great to be able to choose who is giving me the forecast data. There is a small subscription to pay but it does have precipitation radar (if that works where you live) and good design
posted by The River Ivel at 12:44 AM on January 4, 2023
For my fellow Europeans, I recommend Hello Weather, which has a choice of sources - the US and American based sources do very poorly in my area, so it’s great to be able to choose who is giving me the forecast data. There is a small subscription to pay but it does have precipitation radar (if that works where you live) and good design
posted by The River Ivel at 12:44 AM on January 4, 2023
Dark Sky was tremendous for me in the UK, especially in Scotland. I've used pretty much every weather app combined with every source and forecast you can imagine, and nothing could come close to the Dark Sky's next-hour forecasts. I go running a lot and in the winter in Edinburgh, the window of opportunity when it's light and dry is very small, so Dark Sky has genuinely improved my physical and mental health to the point where I feel it'd be worth it for the government to subsidise this kind of thing. Its satellite rain predictions were still the very best, certainly better than Apple Weather's fuzzy mess.
But you needed to know what to use it for; it really was only valuable for the next hour or so. Beyond that, you'd be far better off with other sources like WeatherPro, which has been incredibly good for the next few days.
posted by adrianhon at 1:12 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
But you needed to know what to use it for; it really was only valuable for the next hour or so. Beyond that, you'd be far better off with other sources like WeatherPro, which has been incredibly good for the next few days.
posted by adrianhon at 1:12 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
On the question of forecast accuracy, this website has evaluations for different sites/apps and they can be pretty different:
https://www.forecastadvisor.com/
posted by brendano at 2:37 AM on January 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
https://www.forecastadvisor.com/
posted by brendano at 2:37 AM on January 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've gotten more use out of 4th grade cloud identification than I would have expected, given that was 37 years ago... Similarly, I learned how to leverage a barometer to understand fronts, windspeed and humidity during my first mountaineering course 20ish years ago. Every once in a while, I use an App to get an extended forecast, but most of the time - I'm relying on those for 2-3 day forecast, initial day to day, and a 15-45 minute precipitation prediction.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:18 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:18 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I remember discussing this news with my wife last week, and it surfaced how we're both very different people when it comes to how we consume our weather data. She likes to get a weekly forecast to plan out whether it might make sense to have Tuesday's or Thursday's class office hours outdoors or not (and, if so, tell her classes with sufficient advance notice) and whether she should do all of her outdoor errand running on Saturday or Sunday. I just ignore the weeklies and only check the forecast if I'm wondering if I should bring a rain jacket while I'm grocery shopping this afternoon, for which Dark Sky is really useful.
Living in New England where the weekly predictions can really be in flux day to day, I used to think that the cognitive load of trying to track the percentage chance of rain for Friday was just not worthwhile. My dad loved to follow the weather, and talked about it like the stock market. "Did you hear about this new pressure front building off the coast? I think the rain may come a day early!" Who cares! If it rains, then it rains, and I'll just have another layer. I can be hardy! It's just water!
But then I never had to plan gatherings as part of my job, and if my own mini predictions were off then I was the only one who got wet. I still roll my eyes a little inside when my wife needs to talk about the weekly forecast for more than five minutes, but I know that she needs to do it to process her own planning and I totally get why Dark Sky is useless for her purposes while it was fine for mine.
posted by bl1nk at 5:03 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Living in New England where the weekly predictions can really be in flux day to day, I used to think that the cognitive load of trying to track the percentage chance of rain for Friday was just not worthwhile. My dad loved to follow the weather, and talked about it like the stock market. "Did you hear about this new pressure front building off the coast? I think the rain may come a day early!" Who cares! If it rains, then it rains, and I'll just have another layer. I can be hardy! It's just water!
But then I never had to plan gatherings as part of my job, and if my own mini predictions were off then I was the only one who got wet. I still roll my eyes a little inside when my wife needs to talk about the weekly forecast for more than five minutes, but I know that she needs to do it to process her own planning and I totally get why Dark Sky is useless for her purposes while it was fine for mine.
posted by bl1nk at 5:03 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was a fan of Dark Sky even before it was Dark Sky and was known as the website forecast.io. The app was simple and useful and I much preferred it over Apple's very pretty Weather app. But now that Dark Sky features have been rolled into Weather, that app is just as useful. As an experiment, I've been using Carrot weather because that has more options for lock screen and home screen widgets. Not sure if I'll continue with it beyond the 7-day trial, and I don't like how certain features are only available if you upgrade to the super premium version instead of the normal paid version.
posted by emelenjr at 5:06 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 5:06 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Loved DarkSky's simple interface, but the best UI for weather data nerds was, and probably always will be, Weatherspark Dashboard. Scrollable, historical, customisable weather info alongside a map interface.
Such a crying shame they built it in Flash and didn't have the cash or backing to update it.
posted by moonface at 5:25 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Such a crying shame they built it in Flash and didn't have the cash or backing to update it.
posted by moonface at 5:25 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Pouring another one out for DarkSky over here. Its hyper-local minute-by-minute radar map forecast was invaluable when I lived in Frederick County, VA, a place with fairly volatile weather and no local TV news. When I moved back to Baltimore seeking to resume a walkable lifestyle, it allowed me to know if I could squeeze in a 20-minute dog walk before the rain started again. In both places, the animated radar map was incredibly accurate.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 5:28 AM on January 4, 2023
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 5:28 AM on January 4, 2023
I learned how to leverage a barometer to understand fronts, windspeed and humidity during my first mountaineering course 20ish years ago.
I have a modern equivalent of a Zambretti Forecaster mounted on my wall. It's very amusing how often it's "right" for limited definitions of "right". Also, when it's wrong, it's an interesting exercise to think about why it's wrong, like "it had no way of knowing that the coastal front would penetrate this far inland and we'd get rain instead of snow"
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:31 AM on January 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have a modern equivalent of a Zambretti Forecaster mounted on my wall. It's very amusing how often it's "right" for limited definitions of "right". Also, when it's wrong, it's an interesting exercise to think about why it's wrong, like "it had no way of knowing that the coastal front would penetrate this far inland and we'd get rain instead of snow"
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:31 AM on January 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
I also loved Dark Sky mostly for understanding precipitation patterns over the next hour. Weather across lake Champlain tends to move in bands, so forecasts by zip code or city aren’t very useful. I want to know whether it will be raining here, not two miles north of here and one can be torrential while the other is nearly dry. I also used it from the forecast.io days, so I suppose I’ll adapt again, but for me it’s a loss. I wish the Apple weather app had a light horizontal line at 32 degrees. Turns out that’s a relevant winter temperature in wet places.
posted by meinvt at 5:42 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by meinvt at 5:42 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Seconding the defunct WeatherSpark as the best ever.
Dark Sky's hyperlocal short-term forecast was amazing for answering "should I walk now or in an hour"?
But WeatherSpark combined SO MUCH DATA: the hourly forecast with the 10 day forecast with historical averages on the same graph, so you could answer questions like, "is it really unusually warm for January 4th?" or "What will it probably be like in Barcelona this April"?
posted by bitslayer at 5:46 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Dark Sky's hyperlocal short-term forecast was amazing for answering "should I walk now or in an hour"?
But WeatherSpark combined SO MUCH DATA: the hourly forecast with the 10 day forecast with historical averages on the same graph, so you could answer questions like, "is it really unusually warm for January 4th?" or "What will it probably be like in Barcelona this April"?
posted by bitslayer at 5:46 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Unlike Dark Sky, whose developers more or less boasted when they first launched the app that they weren’t weather scientists (they had previously been working on a project called Tiny Face, an app designed to scientifically measure how small someone could make their face)
One day the pendulum will swing back towards people actually being proud of their expertise instead of cheering on ignorance.
I'm no means an expert, but I like to think I'm slightly more knowledgeable about weather than the average bear; I have a background in fluid dynamics and pilot training is roughly half weather-related (the other half is "for the love of god make sure you have enough gas in the tanks"). Weather is simply a challenging topic, no matter what the impression the glossy people on the evening news give off.
I was going to go off in a bunch of different directions about the interpretation of model outputs, historical trending, geographic variability, and that's why you need someone who's trained in this stuff, but it's too disjointed. I'll mention this instead - I was at Oshkosh last year, and I got the opportunity to chat with an engineer from the Aviation Weather Center. They do a great job of keeping everyone in the air alive. Anyway, I learned a couple of things from him:
-NOAA/NWS is actually currently capable of outputting model runs much faster than the updates are pushed to consumers. (They just recently got a new supercomputer!) It's really the consumers who are holding up more frequent model updates - and the consumer is not you, it's companies like AccuWeather and other services that rely on NWS data. It's too expensive for them to update their systems to receive data more quickly, so NWS deliberately throttles themselves to account for that.
-Convective activity is an instability in the model. The way CFD works, you run the model iteratively and (hopefully) converge on a stable solution. Since convective introduces instabilities in the grid, those instabilities cause error propagation which cause longer-term runs to not converge. So, convective forecasts are only reliable to about 36 hours from their issuance.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:02 AM on January 4, 2023 [7 favorites]
One day the pendulum will swing back towards people actually being proud of their expertise instead of cheering on ignorance.
I'm no means an expert, but I like to think I'm slightly more knowledgeable about weather than the average bear; I have a background in fluid dynamics and pilot training is roughly half weather-related (the other half is "for the love of god make sure you have enough gas in the tanks"). Weather is simply a challenging topic, no matter what the impression the glossy people on the evening news give off.
I was going to go off in a bunch of different directions about the interpretation of model outputs, historical trending, geographic variability, and that's why you need someone who's trained in this stuff, but it's too disjointed. I'll mention this instead - I was at Oshkosh last year, and I got the opportunity to chat with an engineer from the Aviation Weather Center. They do a great job of keeping everyone in the air alive. Anyway, I learned a couple of things from him:
-NOAA/NWS is actually currently capable of outputting model runs much faster than the updates are pushed to consumers. (They just recently got a new supercomputer!) It's really the consumers who are holding up more frequent model updates - and the consumer is not you, it's companies like AccuWeather and other services that rely on NWS data. It's too expensive for them to update their systems to receive data more quickly, so NWS deliberately throttles themselves to account for that.
-Convective activity is an instability in the model. The way CFD works, you run the model iteratively and (hopefully) converge on a stable solution. Since convective introduces instabilities in the grid, those instabilities cause error propagation which cause longer-term runs to not converge. So, convective forecasts are only reliable to about 36 hours from their issuance.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:02 AM on January 4, 2023 [7 favorites]
For the US National Weather Service, the free (gratis & open source) wX app is very nice.
Thanks for mentioning this. I had no idea it existed and it fills my need for an app written by someone who was obviously scratching the same itch I have.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:10 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thanks for mentioning this. I had no idea it existed and it fills my need for an app written by someone who was obviously scratching the same itch I have.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:10 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Another DarkSky user who found it invaluable for biking. “I don’t need to be at work for an hour, and it’s 30 minute ride.. but if I leave right now it’s a drizzle, and if I wait I am going to be Pretty Damp.” The rest of it was whatever as a forecast, but what I really want is “what is the 15min-by-15min forecast for the next 12 hours?” And I’d be pretty content with that
posted by curious nu at 6:26 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by curious nu at 6:26 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
But in the Mountain West the one true weather app is Powder Buoy. Buoy popped….plan your “sick” days now!
Hah! That's fun. It reminds me the 40N-70W "benchmark" that gets mentioned a lot in NWS forecast discussions for the New England region. If a storm tracks inside of the benchmark, it usually means a rain event for Boston. If it goes east of it, we might get a couple inches of snow. But if the storm goes right over the benchmark, watch out! We could get a couple feet of snow.
Also, the only weather forecasting "app" that anyone needs (at least in the Boston area) is the French Toast Alert System which is maintained by Metafilter's own adamg.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:54 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hah! That's fun. It reminds me the 40N-70W "benchmark" that gets mentioned a lot in NWS forecast discussions for the New England region. If a storm tracks inside of the benchmark, it usually means a rain event for Boston. If it goes east of it, we might get a couple inches of snow. But if the storm goes right over the benchmark, watch out! We could get a couple feet of snow.
Also, the only weather forecasting "app" that anyone needs (at least in the Boston area) is the French Toast Alert System which is maintained by Metafilter's own adamg.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:54 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Darksky was a great app, but better still was their API, which made adding global weather data to an app or script dead simple. The API is still available for existing users (e.g., no new signups are allowed) but will be sunsetting on March 31.
posted by jquinby at 7:13 AM on January 4, 2023
posted by jquinby at 7:13 AM on January 4, 2023
Dark Sky was first, I believe, to offer a push notification to your phone “it’s about to rain, get under cover or find your umbrella”, using that radar data and localized map view and etc.
No, I believe that was Umbrella Today, which wasn't even an app. You just went to a website, entered your phone number and zip code, and any time the weather predicted over 30% chance of rain, it would send you a text that morning telling you to bring an umbrella to work. It was hands-down my favorite weather app. I don't usually need to know if it's 45 vs 50 degrees, but I appreciated the warning that it might rain later in the day.
posted by nushustu at 7:43 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
No, I believe that was Umbrella Today, which wasn't even an app. You just went to a website, entered your phone number and zip code, and any time the weather predicted over 30% chance of rain, it would send you a text that morning telling you to bring an umbrella to work. It was hands-down my favorite weather app. I don't usually need to know if it's 45 vs 50 degrees, but I appreciated the warning that it might rain later in the day.
posted by nushustu at 7:43 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
The dark sky API has been cloned, using NWS data, at https://pirateweather.net/. Mostly a decent replacement for it, but it is missing darksky API's bearing to nearby storm, which used their secret sauce image processing.
posted by joeyh at 8:09 AM on January 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by joeyh at 8:09 AM on January 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm sorry that it didn't work for author, but I freaking loved that app and it very rarely failed me.
I will miss DarkSky terribly for its ability to help me decide when I could take the dog out for a walk or back when I worked from the office, help me decide whether I could walk to the train or needed to take the subway.
posted by kimberussell at 8:26 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I will miss DarkSky terribly for its ability to help me decide when I could take the dog out for a walk or back when I worked from the office, help me decide whether I could walk to the train or needed to take the subway.
posted by kimberussell at 8:26 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
My favorite weather app was an old iPhone app from Garmin. You would launch it, and within 1-2 seconds, it would bring up an animated radar of your area. Naturally, Garmin killed the app. DarkSky was a huge step down in that it came up with a static radar image, and it would take 10 seconds or longer to bring up an animation.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:53 AM on January 4, 2023
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:53 AM on January 4, 2023
The PirateWeather API has a simple web front end: Merry Sky. It's using Environment Canada data for my location. Looks believable. But note: PirateWeather and MerrySky are running off one guy's soon-to-expire student AWS account. It will go away if it doesn't get the support the author needs.
→
Hey, the Zambretti was a modern remake of the 19th century pocket forecaster made by Negretti & Zambra. I have a Zambretti somewhere, and my mother has her grandfather's celluloid N&Z somewhere else. They're quite a bit of work to give a sort-of forecast.
→
Their data is pretty good, their APIs quite fine, but their website presentation isn't the greatest. They also are permanently underfunded to get more weather radar installations, and then very challenged to find locations to install them with a long clear skyview. Some of their weather stations are now badly sited, as urban areas have built up around them and changed historical exposure patterns. Some of the automatic stations just plain freeze up all winter. I also seem to remember (I worked for a company that had the contract to audit EC weather stations long ago) that while NWS will report from third-party-owned stations that meet WMO standards, EC uses only its stations. So there's not a lot of infill.
posted by scruss at 9:06 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
→
I have a modern equivalent of a Zambretti Forecaster mounted on my wall.
Hey, the Zambretti was a modern remake of the 19th century pocket forecaster made by Negretti & Zambra. I have a Zambretti somewhere, and my mother has her grandfather's celluloid N&Z somewhere else. They're quite a bit of work to give a sort-of forecast.
→
Environment Canada is also pretty good
Their data is pretty good, their APIs quite fine, but their website presentation isn't the greatest. They also are permanently underfunded to get more weather radar installations, and then very challenged to find locations to install them with a long clear skyview. Some of their weather stations are now badly sited, as urban areas have built up around them and changed historical exposure patterns. Some of the automatic stations just plain freeze up all winter. I also seem to remember (I worked for a company that had the contract to audit EC weather stations long ago) that while NWS will report from third-party-owned stations that meet WMO standards, EC uses only its stations. So there's not a lot of infill.
posted by scruss at 9:06 AM on January 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
When it first came out and I had so many friends touting how awesome it was, I pitted it against other forecast apps and compared it to what actually happened. DarkSky was the outlier: very very pretty, but very bad at predicting the weather, particularly with regards to precipitation.
I wonder if, for all the people in the thread here who had good experiences with its forecasting, there are just some geographic places where the non-scientific "just animate the shapes" method works well enough? The other alternative is perhaps confirmation bias.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:07 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I wonder if, for all the people in the thread here who had good experiences with its forecasting, there are just some geographic places where the non-scientific "just animate the shapes" method works well enough? The other alternative is perhaps confirmation bias.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:07 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Man, I had forgotten about Forecastio (pronounced as if it were a magician doing stage tricks). My wife loved Dark Sky and is mad about the end. I have to say, though, that the rain notifications for our part of DC* were TERRIBLE. It became a running joke between my wife and me. "Bad news! Rain starting!" [Looks out window to see no rain]. For my purposes the notifications from the built-in iOS weather app are equal to those from Dark Sky. They're no worse, but they're also no better. FWIW they've juiced up the data presentation (tap on Hourly Forecast and you can select what I think are all the same bits of data Dark Sky used to show), so if you haven't actually looked at it since upgrading to iOS 16, I'd recommend spending some time poking around. Apple has definitely improved from the old "we also have a weather app" default. My wife is still too mad about Dark Sky to give the built-in app much of a chance, though, and I'm guessing she's not alone.
* The notifications are better for downtown DC than they are for our neighborhood, but even so the Potomac tends to divert storms so that they skirt across only one part of the District. DC weather in general is subject to a few macro patterns, with prevailing winds and geography interacting in ways that push storms one way or the other before they even get here, and even the storms that do get here often track to one side or the other of I-95. Actual meteorologists have trouble forecasting storm tracks and precipitation totals here. Apps that simply push storm tracks based solely on wind direction are lucky they don't get it wrong more often than they do.
posted by fedward at 9:30 AM on January 4, 2023
* The notifications are better for downtown DC than they are for our neighborhood, but even so the Potomac tends to divert storms so that they skirt across only one part of the District. DC weather in general is subject to a few macro patterns, with prevailing winds and geography interacting in ways that push storms one way or the other before they even get here, and even the storms that do get here often track to one side or the other of I-95. Actual meteorologists have trouble forecasting storm tracks and precipitation totals here. Apps that simply push storm tracks based solely on wind direction are lucky they don't get it wrong more often than they do.
posted by fedward at 9:30 AM on January 4, 2023
As long as we're talking about weather apps, I'm wondering if there are any good apps that show storm-track cones. I know the Weather Underground app does, or did. That view is especially useful when I'm camping.
posted by adamrice at 9:54 AM on January 4, 2023
posted by adamrice at 9:54 AM on January 4, 2023
I loved forecast.io and DarkSky. Specifically local, and able to answer the question "Do I need an umbrella in the next hour" pretty accurately. I've been using the default Apple weather app for now, but, eh, not as good.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:17 AM on January 4, 2023
posted by rmd1023 at 10:17 AM on January 4, 2023
DarkSky was the outlier: very very pretty, but very bad at predicting the weather, particularly with regards to precipitation.
I've been stewing over this for hours now, and I need to vent a little - radar echos are not precipitation! The notion that you can take images of NEXRAD data (processed data! which is interpreted!), do some image manipulation on them, and present that as a weather forecast is just... making my head hurt.
When you look at an image output from a radar sweep, what are you actually looking at? Not only what, but where and when are you looking at? Because a weather radar can look at many different angles, out to several hundred kilometers; it also takes time to wait for a return, process it, and form an image. And then you get into the question of whether a composite image is the best thing to look at, or individual layers, or just the base returns.
It's important to know what you're looking at and how to interpret it - even when it's the same data! An example - a while back, I was out flying with a buddy. The plane has a receiver in it to collect weather data over ADS-B. It was a marginal day, so we were looking at the radar returns. We had three devices - one mounted in the panel and two iPads, each running identical software - and all three devices were being fed the same data from the same source. All three displays were different. Not hugely different, mind, but enough that we could not tell whether we were going to skirt an area of precipitation or run right into it.
Interpretation is so, so important, and this is why you can't automate this work out.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:30 AM on January 4, 2023 [6 favorites]
I've been stewing over this for hours now, and I need to vent a little - radar echos are not precipitation! The notion that you can take images of NEXRAD data (processed data! which is interpreted!), do some image manipulation on them, and present that as a weather forecast is just... making my head hurt.
When you look at an image output from a radar sweep, what are you actually looking at? Not only what, but where and when are you looking at? Because a weather radar can look at many different angles, out to several hundred kilometers; it also takes time to wait for a return, process it, and form an image. And then you get into the question of whether a composite image is the best thing to look at, or individual layers, or just the base returns.
It's important to know what you're looking at and how to interpret it - even when it's the same data! An example - a while back, I was out flying with a buddy. The plane has a receiver in it to collect weather data over ADS-B. It was a marginal day, so we were looking at the radar returns. We had three devices - one mounted in the panel and two iPads, each running identical software - and all three devices were being fed the same data from the same source. All three displays were different. Not hugely different, mind, but enough that we could not tell whether we were going to skirt an area of precipitation or run right into it.
Interpretation is so, so important, and this is why you can't automate this work out.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:30 AM on January 4, 2023 [6 favorites]
I wonder if, for all the people in the thread here who had good experiences with its forecasting, there are just some geographic places where the non-scientific "just animate the shapes" method works well enough?
I live in the Los Angeles region, and to a first order that's about right. I don't put much stock in hyperlocal "it'll start raining in 10 minutes" but big NEXRAD blobs all over the region = it'll probably rain on you today in LA. I'm well aware that this example is a very narrow case where radar blob = rain has a strong enough correlation to be useful.
posted by tclark at 12:00 PM on January 4, 2023
I live in the Los Angeles region, and to a first order that's about right. I don't put much stock in hyperlocal "it'll start raining in 10 minutes" but big NEXRAD blobs all over the region = it'll probably rain on you today in LA. I'm well aware that this example is a very narrow case where radar blob = rain has a strong enough correlation to be useful.
posted by tclark at 12:00 PM on January 4, 2023
I like the iOS 16 Weather app slightly better than I did Dark Sky--for my own use case, where I might want an occasional deep dive into the weather but mostly just want to know if rain is a possibility, it's a little easier to navigate and the data seems to be very similar.
What I'll really miss about Dark Sky is that it was a weather-nerd app with a one-time purchase model instead of a subscription. I may never see another one of those again.
posted by box at 1:00 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
What I'll really miss about Dark Sky is that it was a weather-nerd app with a one-time purchase model instead of a subscription. I may never see another one of those again.
posted by box at 1:00 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I forget to mention OpenSummit, which is good for camping / outdoor adventuring forecasts (including not just weather but estimated trail conditions, potential for lightning, wildfire smoke, avalanche risk overlays etc)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:32 PM on January 4, 2023
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:32 PM on January 4, 2023
I've been paying for Carrot Weather for years (I'm on some sort of legacy plan that is something stupid like 50c a month), and it allows you to choose your weather data source. I've mostly been using Dark Sky there, so I'll be sad when Apple finally pulls it. I assume the Carrot weather folk will integrate with the new Apple API though. I really like being able to toggle between the different weather API sources however - it always strikes me how different they can be. I just want to know when it's safe to walk the dog without needing to try and juggle an umbrella as well dammit! But Carrot's snark also amuses me, and at this point it'd be weird to go thru my day without it.
posted by cgg at 1:36 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cgg at 1:36 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have a modern equivalent of a Zambretti Forecaster mounted on my wall. It's very amusing how often it's "right" for limited definitions of "right". Also, when it's wrong, it's an interesting exercise to think about why it's wrong, like "it had no way of knowing that the coastal front would penetrate this far inland and we'd get rain instead of snow"
Thanks for that. I never have had any idea how you are supposed to use a barometer, considering the range of values is pretty small, and the changes over time are abstractions. If you look it up online, your link is basically the only info about it.
I have a weather history program using openweathermap api that collects current data but makes no predictions - I'll see if I can use this to make them. One thing I will say is that it seems like it was designed for a different climate, as howling northern wind is a pretty good indicator of horrible weather where I am, and Zambretti's formula makes no adjustments for north to south blowing wind.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:47 PM on January 4, 2023
Thanks for that. I never have had any idea how you are supposed to use a barometer, considering the range of values is pretty small, and the changes over time are abstractions. If you look it up online, your link is basically the only info about it.
I have a weather history program using openweathermap api that collects current data but makes no predictions - I'll see if I can use this to make them. One thing I will say is that it seems like it was designed for a different climate, as howling northern wind is a pretty good indicator of horrible weather where I am, and Zambretti's formula makes no adjustments for north to south blowing wind.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:47 PM on January 4, 2023
I loved DarkSky when I lived in Minneapolis where the weather radar coverage was good, and the terrain didn’t cause issues.
Once I moved to Santa Fe, I quit trusting it, because where we live now, we’re at the outer edge of the coverage from the weather radar at Cannon AFB, and the weather radar at ABQ can’t see the ground here because of the Sandia Mountains. So it was continually telling us that it was raining when it wasn’t. And I spent the first two years reporting that in the app before they announced they were being eaten by Apple, at which point I lost any urge to help improve the app.
The other main thing that I disliked was that all weather apps seem to have zero clue about what the wind is going to do here. They might have accurate wind data (but most don’t look at the citizen weather stations which would give a decently dense grid), but they’re horrible at forecasting, even as to whether we’ll have 20mph winds tomorrow beginning at 8am or at noon.
Bother.
posted by DaveP at 3:05 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Once I moved to Santa Fe, I quit trusting it, because where we live now, we’re at the outer edge of the coverage from the weather radar at Cannon AFB, and the weather radar at ABQ can’t see the ground here because of the Sandia Mountains. So it was continually telling us that it was raining when it wasn’t. And I spent the first two years reporting that in the app before they announced they were being eaten by Apple, at which point I lost any urge to help improve the app.
The other main thing that I disliked was that all weather apps seem to have zero clue about what the wind is going to do here. They might have accurate wind data (but most don’t look at the citizen weather stations which would give a decently dense grid), but they’re horrible at forecasting, even as to whether we’ll have 20mph winds tomorrow beginning at 8am or at noon.
Bother.
posted by DaveP at 3:05 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
> Forecastio (pronounced as if it were a magician doing stage tricks).
I actually emailed their support about this (back in 2014!) and they wrote back:
I actually emailed their support about this (back in 2014!) and they wrote back:
We do the exact same thing—there were a few days during development that we were so busy saying "forecasteeeeeo" that we couldn't get the site debugged properly!posted by moonmilk at 4:20 PM on January 4, 2023 [7 favorites]
I wonder if, for all the people in the thread here who had good experiences with its forecasting, there are just some geographic places where the non-scientific "just animate the shapes" method works well enough? The other alternative is perhaps confirmation bias.
I live sandwiched between the coast and a range of hills and >95 percent of the time that it rains here you can see the radar blobs form out at sea or inland over the hills and slowly roll in.
posted by zymil at 5:10 PM on January 4, 2023
I have a weather history program using openweathermap api that collects current data but makes no predictions - I'll see if I can use this to make them.
There's a python-based implementation of the Zambretti algorithm as part of the forecasting plugin for weewx. It's GPLv3 and it might be easier to borrow code from that implementation than starting from description in the earlier link.
I have no idea if it's the same algorithm used in those LCD "weather stations" you can buy at Lowes. The one I have on my wall supposedly uses data gathered from the previous 14 days to "predict" what the weather will be for the next 12-24 hours. I personally think it's accuracy relies on a healthy dose of sampling bias, which makes it about as accurate as the "micro-forecasts" provided by many weather apps: good enough to suggest that I take an umbrella, just in case I might need it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:31 PM on January 4, 2023
There's a python-based implementation of the Zambretti algorithm as part of the forecasting plugin for weewx. It's GPLv3 and it might be easier to borrow code from that implementation than starting from description in the earlier link.
I have no idea if it's the same algorithm used in those LCD "weather stations" you can buy at Lowes. The one I have on my wall supposedly uses data gathered from the previous 14 days to "predict" what the weather will be for the next 12-24 hours. I personally think it's accuracy relies on a healthy dose of sampling bias, which makes it about as accurate as the "micro-forecasts" provided by many weather apps: good enough to suggest that I take an umbrella, just in case I might need it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:31 PM on January 4, 2023
Weather prediction is an educated-guess scientific modeling that hey, sometimes is right, and will probably get more accurate once AI gets into it, but still it's like being an oracle on a micro-scale that Dark Sky tried to be.
In some sense, the best AI can do is produce a better, more localized Zambretti algorithm. Negretti & Zambra worked out a bunch of recurring patterns that can be useful for making an educated guess about what the weather's going to do, and that's kind of what you'd get if you fed a bunch of historical data into a neural network. It would probably work great a lot of the time, but fall completely on it's ass if something unprecedented happened--which seems to be happening quite a lot given climate change. At least traditional numerical models are working from the underlying physics and have a better chance of predicting something weird.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:48 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
In some sense, the best AI can do is produce a better, more localized Zambretti algorithm. Negretti & Zambra worked out a bunch of recurring patterns that can be useful for making an educated guess about what the weather's going to do, and that's kind of what you'd get if you fed a bunch of historical data into a neural network. It would probably work great a lot of the time, but fall completely on it's ass if something unprecedented happened--which seems to be happening quite a lot given climate change. At least traditional numerical models are working from the underlying physics and have a better chance of predicting something weird.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:48 PM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a python-based implementation of the Zambretti algorithm as part of the forecasting plugin for weewx. It's GPLv3 and it might be easier to borrow code from that implementation than starting from description in the earlier link.
Eh, I wrote it up in like an hour, already had all the data, just had to get the formulas and descriptions typed in. Though finding more on those descriptions hasn't proved fruitful. Like #26 "changable, mending", #28 "unsettled, probably improving", and #30 "very unsettled, finer at times". Those are fun.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:19 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Eh, I wrote it up in like an hour, already had all the data, just had to get the formulas and descriptions typed in. Though finding more on those descriptions hasn't proved fruitful. Like #26 "changable, mending", #28 "unsettled, probably improving", and #30 "very unsettled, finer at times". Those are fun.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:19 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The reason I bought Dark Sky was the spinning globe! It made me so much happier than the ubiquitous two-dimensional panning all the other apps show. Ah well, back to the inaccurate projections -- which does undermine my confidence.
posted by Jesse the K at 8:51 AM on January 6, 2023
posted by Jesse the K at 8:51 AM on January 6, 2023
Tuesday's storms knocked me off the Internet so I'm only just getting to this. This is my statement about Dark Sky: I paid money for Dark Sky and used it every day. Its programmable alerts and precipitation alert features were worth the money. When Apple bought them and ended it, I swore eternal enmity against Apple.
I guess I understand that they precipitation alerts didn't work everywhere and the forecasts were just graphic extrapolations and that makes me sad. It worked for me and replacements like Open Weather Map just aren't as good as Dark Sky was five years ago.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:19 PM on January 6, 2023
I guess I understand that they precipitation alerts didn't work everywhere and the forecasts were just graphic extrapolations and that makes me sad. It worked for me and replacements like Open Weather Map just aren't as good as Dark Sky was five years ago.
adamrice: “As long as we're talking about weather apps, I'm wondering if there are any good apps that show storm-track cones. I know the Weather Underground app does, or did. That view is especially useful when I'm camping.”The Wundermap hasn't been worth a damn since IBM bought them and switched it off of Google Maps.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:19 PM on January 6, 2023
Amazeyposted by ob1quixote at 7:22 PM on January 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
@twistylittlepassages@weirder.earth
a re-creation of Dark Sky (weather website/API) based on open data was released today!🌤️
https://merrysky.net/
https://pirateweather.net/
Jan 04, 2023, 10:53
Just wanted to put in a plug for windy.com, which comes in both browser and mobile form. The UI is a little opaque but you can coax out of it amazingly detailed forecasts and current observations. However it doesn't do Dark Sky's microforecasts, it's much more oriented towards large scale weather.
posted by Nelson at 3:04 PM on January 10, 2023
posted by Nelson at 3:04 PM on January 10, 2023
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