I understand that weather on TV can’t be hyperlocally accurate. But a weather app on my phone has my exact GPS coordinates. Why can’t it tell me exactly when a rain cloud will be passing over my location?

It’s gotten to the point where I just use precipitation maps to figure out my rain chances for the day.

The hourly forecast is mostly useless because it’s not a chance % but a % of the area that will be raining.

  • @solrize
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    61 month ago

    Apple bought darksky

    OMG I had no idea. Ouch.

    • Curious Canid
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      1 month ago

      Oh, yeah. Not only did they take it away from all Android users, they also killed the API that let other apps access it. I wrote an open-source tool that made Dark Sky data available to Wear OS watch faces. It worked beautifully for several years, until Apple killed it.

      The worst of it is that was my second attempt. An earlier version of the same tool worked with Weather Underground data. Then IBM bought it, changed the API completely, and priced it so that only business could afford it.

      I haven’t had the heart to try a third time.

      Sorry, every once in a while I’m overcome with the need to whine about it.

        • Curious Canid
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          11 month ago

          I appreciate the suggestion. I have thought about it, but part of what I wanted, like the original poster, was more localized information. NWS is great for overall data, but it doesn’t get down to precise locations.

      • @sramder
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        31 month ago

        LOL. Thanks for your service. I think you should let yourself off with time served ;-)

      • @solrize
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        21 month ago

        Does most weather data in the US ultimately come from weather.gov? No idea about API but maybe it can be scraped from the web.

        • Curious Canid
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          21 month ago

          NWS is a great resource, but there are a startling number of other organizations that collect weather data.