[GeoffKnauth]

I like that Kirill Dubovikov built a weather station and showed others how. The more people who do this, the better, not just for education and skills, but in terms of gathering weather information that can help forecasters. He wrote, "the Weather app on my iPhone is not very good at making accurate forecasts," and I thought, "he must have been using the wrong app." I hope in addition to building weather stations and inspiring others to do so, he'll also give the AccuWeather app a try. [I work at AccuWeather; I admire the work my colleagues do to make and deliver accurate forecasts.] Even if Kirill prefers his weather station, I hope he'll use good apps to cross-check his station. Kirill can help in other ways. I speak Russian, so I volunteered to help beta-test the upcoming new app in Russian. My whole iPhone is in Russian at the moment. But Kirill is a native speaker.

[roter]

One issue with hobbyist weather stations is that they aren't particularly useful for use for assimilating into numerical weather models. The pressure is useful as it is relatively hard to get that wrong unless mislabelling sea-level pressure as station pressure.

Other variables can be significantly in error due to the siting of the station: under a tree, not aspirated, in the wake of a building, on a rooftop, etc.

[move-on-by]

I think wind it particularly hard to get right. However, any station contributing to the CWOP can be looked up on 'weather.gladstonefamily.net' for really nice quality control stats against other local stations. For reference, here is one I randomly picked in the Nashville area that is passing quality control for pressure and temperature, but failing the wind QC:

https://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/AP187

[JshWright]

> Other variables can be significantly in error due to the siting of the station: under a tree, not aspirated, in the wake of a building, on a rooftop, etc.

I would think there is still value there, at a sufficient scale.

[0-O-0]

Gave it a quick test and I think you should invest a bit more into UX. Default screen shows me only current weather and that just isn't useful. Compare it to default Weather app. Or was I supposed to configure this screen?

Navigation inside the app doesn't feel intuitive at all. Maybe it's more similar to default experience on android? No idea. Map/Hourly/Daily buttons don't work as tabs. Daily view arrives with scrolling up animation, but when you scroll to close it there is a large ad banner (well, understandable, but awkward) and for some reason weather news (why would anyone want it there or at all?). I've noticed "close" button later, but it was in bottom right corner for some reason.

Plastering "RealFeel(r)" everywhere was horrible idea. It is corny, unnecessary and reads worse than "feels like".

[GeoffKnauth]

Thanks. I think the new app coming out next month has a better UX. As for comparison with the default Weather app, I think the underlying forecast is more accurate. [Note, I work not on the app, but in back-end data. I'm happy to forward feedback to the people who work on the app.]

[magicalhippo]

I had been very disappointed with the local weather forecast last summer, and then there was an interview with one of the meteorologists involved and they said they were quite proud of how accurate their predictions had been so far. I was taken aback, as in my mind their "success rate" had been well below 50%.

Then I got my answer: they focused on the temperature forecast, while since I bike to work what I was interested in was "is it gonna rain today?"

I get that it's difficult to predict when and where rain might occur, but I'd much prefer a rough probability scale to nothing. On the bright side, they have a real-time, radar-based 90 minute rain forecast now, so at least if I check it in the afternoon I can jump on my bike and get home before I get wet.

[danielbarla]

I think part of the problem is not the accuracy of the forecast, but whether it's useful to you, or not.

As an example, they may forecast that 30% of the areas your city will report rain tomorrow. They may have an high level of confidence in this prediction (and verify it to be correct after the fact). It may still not be very useful to you, since the one outcome is so different to the other.

That said, I agree with your that the predictions should be presented in a more scientific manner. In fact, one irritating pattern is that rain probability and the predicted amount of rain sometimes get combined into a single percentage, which no longer represents neither the probability, nor the amount. It's some kind of weird combination of the two.

[magicalhippo]

Yeah, here they report rain just in mm. They might say 3-7.3mm, or they might say 0-4mm. Now I don't care too much about 2.5mm or 6.1mm, but I definitely care about the chance of more than light rain. For others, people with a gardens etc, the amount of water might matter more.

Just last Thursday they reported zero precipitation for the entire day, not a hint of rain. Yet we got 3 hours of medium-heavy showers in the afternoon... not a very uncommon combination. If I had known there was a 30% chance of showers, I would have packed my rain jacket.

[GeoffKnauth]

From talking with meteorologists, it seems forecasting actual rain is not very hard if you have enough current data on the state of the atmosphere. What can be difficult is mistiness that is just on the borderline between falling droplets and moisture just hanging in the air. Differences can be extremely local in nature. [I'm not a meteorologist, I program computers, but I'm a pilot so I have a pilot's appreciation of and contact with weather.]

[roter]

Or even the proportion and impact of ice v. water droplets. The modelling of this in a warming world is making the latest global climate models used in the upcoming IPCC AR6 show a higher equilibrium climate sensitivity than the previous edition [0].

[0] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/06/sensit...

[brootstrap]

Hi geoff - seems like you are pretty knowledgeable here. I have to disagree with "seems forecasting actual rain is not very hard if you have enough current data on the state of the atmosphere" ... Who told you that? accuweather meteologists?

Rain is not easy predict, especially long in advance. Just taking things with a grain of salt here. If you truly believe that forecasting actual rain is not very hard, please start a new weather forecasting company and give it all you got! However i'll tell you, it's not that easy. Just because a computer model 'runs' does not mean it correctly modeled the atmosphere. All models are imperfect bud and those imperfections get amplified by 10x when trying to simulate earth+atmosphere systems

[GeoffKnauth]

No, I'm not especially knowledgeable, not more than others here. As a pilot, I have 42 years of experience flying through weather and helping get the word out w/r/t hurricanes, e.g., relaying info via ham radio in the West Indies from relays in Florida before getting hit by the storms, back in the 1970s when that was the way, so I have long interest in and appreciation of weather. But I do also have appreciation for my colleagues and their meteorological expertise. They have something called MinuteCast which in my experience has been very accurate in telling me when precipitation will begin or end (except when it is misty). Regarding my "forecasting actual rain is not very hard" remark, you are right that a "long in advance" forecast is hard, but I was talking about the short term. Specifically, a commenter had wanted to know if it was going to rain before going out to exercise, and for that example, I meant a forecast of precipitation was easy.

[macintux]

I believe accuracy may have dropped due to the decreased number of flights collecting data, but Dark Sky in years past has been very effective at forecasting rain. I rely heavily on it since I typically go most of the summer without a top on my Jeep.

[GeoffKnauth]

I think you will like the new app coming out next month better, especially with your use case.

[brootstrap]

Accuweather? Lol please give me that 45 day daily forecast! All apps use the same fucking forecasts that our government puts out. The problem i think is with people's expectations. They dont understand weather and think it's easy to predict like some other things. They dont understand that it is a dynamic, chaotic, non linear system where repeating the same process 1000x will always yield slightly diff results

[wrycoder]

We track the snow forecasts closely and my experience is that any forecast more than a week ahead is no better than a coin flip and will usually be changed. We joke about Inaccuweather.

[brootstrap]

To be fair forecasting snow is hard. I'm just generally against certain companies that 'sell' products that are garbage. If you want helpful weather forecasts go to your local government weather office forecast page. Dont trust some giant global company trying to make money selling ad space on their webpage