[Drybones]

Upsetting about the app, but the new iOS weather app has the functionality essentially.

The real gut wrencher is the darksky website going down. It’s how I check weather most of the time a no other browser weather site comes close to it in simplicity and features.

[morley]

I've used the weather.gov site for the last ~5 years, and it has been great. I bookmark both the 7-day local forecast[1] and the hourly dashboard[2].

[1] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71234500000...

[2] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w0=t&w3u=1&w5=pop&...

[adolph]

The advantage of DarkSky was hyperlocalized forecast. I was able to time a walk between buildings dryly.

[aeyes]

In hope that this could be useful to you: In Europe I had good success using AccuWeather for a similar purpose, the 60min forecast was almost always on point.

[hulitu]

Accuweather in EU was a total disaster for me in the last months.

[JadeNB]

It's always worth a try. My father on the east coast reported similar excellent accuracy for hyperlocal precipitation forecasts from AccuWeather, but I've found the rain forecasts in TX little better than guesses (often going so far as to fail to predict what the rainfall will be in 15 minutes, much less in a few hours).

[adolph]

I'll give it a try, thank you for an alternative.

[lettergram]

I’ll miss it as well, it’s been essential as I farm for timing. Particularly, the hourly rain rate. It rains all the time where I am and knowing when it’ll get above a certain threshold is key so I know when I have to pack up or get stuck

[macintux]

For the last several years I’ve been driving topless Jeeps most of the summer, and Dark Sky has been hugely helpful.

[nojito]

They also have a really nice api.

https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api

[aeharding]

It has a really nice design. Much easier to use than any other US government api I’ve used. Just some minor issues with upstream data availability leading to errors, as well as duplicate alerts.

I’m using it for a side project (https://ppg.report/41.876,-87.624)

[arh68]

Along these lines, I also really like the Aviation Radar maps

[1] https://aviationweather.gov/radar/plot?region=alb

(feel free to change, in the top left, Type = Comp Ref, and to Loop)

[sklargh]

https://nasstatus.faa.gov - will give you exceptionally accurate information about flight delays unrelated to your aircraft. wx & airspace.

[aeharding]

Another good one - https://www.1800wxbrief.com/Website/interactiveMap

[Maursault]

Same, but since 2010 on iPad. When Dark Sky got popular, I looked at it, but I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I'm sure the data is fine, but it is not an attractive app by any means, the graphics all look washed-out, and the data presentation is nothing special. Everything needed for local weather is provided by that free hourly dashboard on weather.gov. Because it is slick, I also use RadarScope on rainy days, and not as often for checking wind I'll use windy.com. On CLI I use py-metar to grab weather data from nearby NOAA stations, but I get those station IDs from weather.gov

[vorpalhex]

Dark Sky had three big features:

1. Hyperlocal data which made it _very_ accurate in a lot of cases. Not flawless, but better than others.

2. Simple and fast. Sure, the UI wasn't fancy - but it loaded quickly. No bloat.

3. They had a really lovely API that was simple to use.

[Maursault]

> They had a really lovely API

That is enough, and I personally wouldn't have noticed. Thanks for the clue.

[tomaskafka]

Hi, if you like meteograms (I do, as you might tell :)), I tried to make them really really beautiful, and turn them into home/lock screen widgets and watch complications in Weathergraph: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1501958576

[runarberg]

Doesn’t seem to have configurable units... They provide today’s temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (as well as pressure in mb and inches [why mb instead of hPa I don’t know]), but wind speed is stuck in MPH (I prefer m/s) and future dates are always Fahrenheit. Also it is missing detailed forecast for future dates.

Overall pretty lacking in usability compared to dark sky.

[acomjean]

I started using the weather.gov hourly dashboard when I started riding my bike 5 years ago. A couple weeks in and It really was very intuitive to read. I like that it also highlights the sunrise and sunset times.

[unsignedint]

Shortly after Darksky left Android, started using Windy. [1]

Not necessarily a simplest solution for weather forecast, but provides wealth of information to satisfy my meteorological curiosity as well. (I pay Premium for higher precision data, and I think it worth every penny IMHO.)

[1]: https://www.windy.com/

[JeremyNT]

On android, I switched to the open source "wX" app, which uses NWS data under the hood. It's incredibly detailed and although the UX is a little rough it's because it's aimed at power users, so I figured the HN crowd might appreciate it.

Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx

F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/joshuatee.wx/

Source: https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx

[drewlander]

I use that too but on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wxl23/id1171250052

https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wxl23

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

On Android I use Geometric Weather. I believe it uses AccuWeather.

https://github.com/WangDaYeeeeee/GeometricWeather

[seanp2k2]

https://weatherflow.com/ is also good. I pay for their iKiteSurf product as a kitesurfer and it works decently well once you understand what "16 knots" at one spot vs another really means out on the water.

[rubslopes]

Wow, it has super recent street cam images throughout my city. I had no idea this existed. Thanks!

[lighttower]

I use VentuSky. I pay for the premium layers. Happy customer

[jszymborski]

I usually used Darksky for the hourly percipitation forecast. It helped me time things out.

For fellow Canadians who used it similarly, the Canadian Gov't has a pretty handy hourly forecast[0].

The radar is also nice [1].

[0] https://www.weather.gc.ca/forecast/hourly/qc-147_metric_e.ht...

[1] https://www.weather.gc.ca/map_e.html?layers=radar&zoom=-1&ce...

[emptybits]

Agree. I have trusted the Environment Canada forecasts for years. Web and basic app. The government-issued stuff isn't as featureful or pretty as some apps, but I go back to it every time because its track record here (Vancouver) has been good to me.

I wish there was an API or non-scraping approach to retrieve the daily & hourly forecasts. With the popularity of open data policies on tax-funded public data... it seems there should be.

[bpye]

I'm pretty sure this - https://api.weather.gc.ca/ - is what you're looking for. It looks like they expose lots of data via an API, including the 7 day forecast.

For example this should be the Vancouver forecast - https://dd.weather.gc.ca/citypage_weather/xml/BC/s0000141_e....

I think this is the hourly data - though in a slightly odd format - https://dd.weather.gc.ca/nowcasting/matrices/

Edit: Aha found the nowcast docs - https://eccc-msc.github.io/open-data/msc-data/nwp_nowcasting...

[emptybits]

Nice! That hourly data link ("*matrices") looks easy enough to parse. Thank you!

[quickthrowman]

It definitely does not have the same functionality, you can only see the current temp/precip prob %/humidity/dewpoint/wind speed/etc, you can’t see the forecasted stats I listed in the iOS weather app, you can only get hour by hour temperature.

I’m very disappointed that Dark Sky is going away. If Apple added in the ability to see forecasted hour by hour wind speed/humidity/dew point/etc, it’d be a decent replacement.

[Shank]

> I’m very disappointed that Dark Sky is going away. If Apple added in the ability to see forecasted hour by hour wind speed/humidity/dew point/etc, it’d be a decent replacement.

In iOS 16 (and in macOS Ventura, which adds the Weather app), you can view hourly temperature, UV index, wind speed, precipitation, feels like, humidity, visibility, and pressure, on a graph. You can also tap and hold to view individual hourly data. You should see if the updated experience works for you!

[r00fus]

What about the "time machine" feature in Dark Sky? I really like being able to look in the past/future arbitrarily.

[TrueGeek]

I really hope this add this in to the default app. I use it constantly!

[Hel5inki]

If Apple can give me an allergen outlook similar to Accuweather I’ll finally be able to swap. This update was quite nice, but the allergy watch has helped me proactively respond to seasonal allergies which is hard to pass up on. A more granular detail of air quality would be nice as well, but I don’t need it to switch

[nytesky]

That is great, because hourly dew point is so important to knowing how comfortable it will be.

Now we just need a lightening tracker in iOS weather…

[quickthrowman]

Oh, that’s great news! Glad to hear that Apple included that in the iOS 16 version, I haven’t upgraded yet. Thanks for the info!

[kslambert]

100% to this. Apple weather has a lot of the functionality but it’s not close when it comes to the experience. For wet climates like the PNW this is a hard change.

[dcormier]

In iOS 16 it’s greatly improved. You can now get the predicted hourly temperature, UV index, wind, rainfall, feels like temperature, humidity, visibility, and atmospheric pressure.

[pgoggijr]

Most of the functionality is coming in iOS 16: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/08/ios-16-weather-app-upda...

[jnovek]

I get migraines triggered by the weather and I can’t find another app with barometric pressure forecasts and history.

[TrueGeek]

I wrote an app called Migraine Weather that was specifically for that. I ended up selling it and it’s now called WeatherX. I no longer have any connection to the app, but I do continue to use it myself.

[jnovek]

Thanks for the heads-up, this looks good. I will try it out.

[samcat116]

This has changed completely in iOS 16

[misnome]

I've found that the Weather app maps are lower resolution than the Dark Sky app, and still has the bug where large portions of the weather radar just.. disappears when trying to render the recent history.

[festiveakp]

Usually I use the default Samsung weather app, but when I'm on my PC https://wttr.in/ is a fun one, and you can even get terminal-readable output by using something like cURL!

[seanp2k2]

Nice, I made something similar with https://github.com/ip2k/we4ther?files=1 a decade ago. It used to be up at we4ther.com but I hadn't updated the code in a long long time and didn't bother migrating it to my latest server. The free MaxMind GeoIP DB is def good enough to detect location (this was before the browser location API) close enough to give accurate weather.

[GeekyBear]

The iOS weather app has the functionality, without selling your location data to data brokers, as has normally been the case with third party weather apps.

>Weather apps are secretly selling your location data to the highest bidder

https://thenextweb.com/news/weather-apps-are-secretly-sellin...

[hahajk]

This looks like Dark Sky's response to that article.

https://mobile.twitter.com/darkskyapp/status/108135144619558...

So, not the case with Dark Sky.

[GeekyBear]

>We still do not, and never will, sell your location data to 3rd parties.

They sold the whole company. If they had sold to a data hoarder like Google or Facebook, I have very little doubt that the data would have been included.

Who in their right mind thinks Google wanted to buy Fitbit for anything but their data?

[inlined]

I’m really tired of hearing everyone suggest Google is some boogeyman trying to do something subversive to get your data. Anyone who thinks this should grab their nearest google engineer and talk about privacy controls internally. Privacy is critical to the company and every product launch has a privacy review. In one of my launches we even had to add an opt in to allow users to share data with themselves because it crossed product boundaries.

[GeekyBear]

> because it crossed product boundaries

Sorry, but I still remember Google pinky swearing before Congress that it would never combine the data it had on it's users with the advertising profiles it acquired with DoubleClick.

>In today's Big Tech antitrust hearing in front of a Congressional subcommittee, representative Val Demings questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the company's merger with DoubleClick.

Specifically, the way Google combined data from the advertising company -- bought in 2007 -- with Google's own data. Founder Sergey Brin had told Congress it would not combine the personal information, but the company quietly did so in 2016 anyway.

https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-hearing-doubleclic...

>Google’s privacy policies as of March 1, 2012 established that no combination between DoubleClick’s advertising data and Google’s personally-identifiable information would take place without the prior consent of its users, but an updated version of those policies subtly allowed the integration of both databases regardless of prior consent of its users

https://www.promarket.org/2020/08/21/why-we-should-be-carefu...

People suggest that Google is a boogeyman because they have repeatedly broken their promises.

[andreareina]

Except I can't set a home location in Maps without enabling location history. Neither can I limit location history to Maps. And if I've logged out of my account I can't access groups archives (but that works fine incog, so why am I being required to sign in?). And Google is damn aggressive about linking accounts with who knows what repercussions. Actually, I do know: get all your accounts nuked because of a clear false positive that Google will nonetheless uphold[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560361

[nuker]

> Anyone who thinks this should grab their nearest google engineer and talk about privacy controls internally. Privacy is critical to the company …

Better grab a top level business executive, who tracks company sources of income. Why engineer? He is far from money flows.

[PascLeRasc]

All of the Google employees I've met have been incredibly vocal about security and privacy, really considerate about how technology should serve us, as well as being some of the kindest engineers I've ever met. I can't really square the HN attitude of Google being evil with my experience.

[GeekyBear]

Some of them were kind enough to speak out internally about Google's terrible privacy settings, after Google was caught still tracking user location for users who had followed Google's advice on how to turn off location tracking.

>"The current UI feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet difficult enough that people won’t figure it out."

"Some people (including even Googlers) don’t know that there is a global switch and a per-device switch."

"Indeed we aren’t very good at explaining this to users. Add me to the list of Googlers who didn’t understand how this worked and was surprised when I read the article ... we shipped a UI that confuses users."

"I agree with the article. Location off should mean location off, not except for this case or that case."

"Speaking as a user, WTF?" another employee said, in additional documentation obtained by the Arizona Mirror. "More specifically I *thought* I had location tracking turned off on my phone. So our messaging around this is enough to confuse a privacy focused (Google software engineer). That’s not good."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/unredacted-suit-...

However, the engineers at Google aren't in charge.

[scarface74]

How does Google make money? Apple’s value proposition is very simple. I give Apple money and they give me goods and services.

[seanp2k2]

Well, they also got the engineers.

[__mp]

I like

- https://www.meteoblue.com - check out the multi model, the multi model ensemble , the meteograms and the weather maps! Sadly the app itself is not as good as the website.

- https://yr.no - One of the few "free" providers with ECMWF model data (Norway has open data, that's why the data is free)

- https://www.windy.com/ - ECMWF, GFS and ICON. I don't like their presentation, but the available data is quite nice.

If you want a DarkSky replacement API, then checkout out https://pirateweather.net/ (GFS only, sadly :/ )

[gcanyon]

Does iOS do the freaky-accurate “light rain starting in five minutes, ending twenty minutes later” thing? If so, I’d love to know where, I’ve missed it.

[NobodyNada]

Yes. If there’s rain forecasted for the next hour, it’s displayed prominently on the top of the weather interface (it’s hidden if there’s no rain expected). It will also appear on your home screen if you add a weather widget.

[bsimpson]

FWIW, Google does that (at least on Android). You get a notification if it's expected to rain soon.

Honestly, Dark Sky had been my habitual weather app until Apple killed it, but it doesn't seem as accurate as I expected. I don't know if this means I've been in places where their data is less optimized, or if I'm just noticing it more now that I have to look at other options.

[vl]

Dark Sky hyper-prediction is very location-dependent. In some places it’s spot-on, in other not even in the ballpark.

[Jamie9912]

It depends where you are exactly, I had it available in the UK, but in Australia I haven't seen it

[lathiat]

I get that from the "Rain Parrot" app.

[Alex3917]

No, but it's currently in beta in the API, so possibly it will come in the future:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi/...

[dylan604]

i'm not running any betas, and i have this feature. i don't remember if it was the latest iOS or the one prior though

[cycomanic]

The best weather website IMO is windy. I used it a lot when I was sailing/windsurfing, but you can also use it for general forecasts.

[jrockway]

For weather stuff, there are a lot of good resources. For current conditions, I use my state's mesonet: https://www2.nysmesonet.org/ (Specifically, I bookmark a nearby location: http://www.nysmesonet.org/weather/local#network=nysm&stid=bk.... This page also pulls in official National Weather Service forecasts.)

For radar, I just use GR Level 3. I was tired of the slowness of the web. I add shapefiles for mPING, lightning, NWS watches, NWS convective outlooks / mesoscale discussions, etc. Great piece of software, and lots of shapefiles available on the Internet to extend it.

For forecasting, I use the College of DuPage forecast tools: https://weather.cod.edu/forecast/. There is a learning curve, but the "simulated reflectivity" is a prediction of where it's going to rain. It predicts what a radar mosaic would look like at the forecast time. I like HRRR for "today" and NAMNST for "tomorrow". GFS is also a classic for longer-term predictions, but I don't have a good enough memory to tell you how accurate it is. (HRRR is some good tech, though. Predicting the future is tough, HRRR does a pretty good job.) These models also have decent surface predictions; temperature, dewpoint, winds, etc. If you're willing to step through some pretty pictures in a very nice web interface, you can get some great ideas of what the weather is going to do. Well worth a visit.

On NAM and some other models, you can also long-press on a point to see a forecast sounding. This is probably in the realm of too much information for the average person interested in weather (and using models to make your own forecast probably is too), but hey, they have some neat software and you should play with it.

Finally, I like the SPC's site for situational awareness of thunderstorms in the summer: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/. Their forecast tools are also excellent: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/. Specifically, the mesoanalysis graphics can be interesting for anticipating exceptional events.

Anyway, I used to be a heavy user of Weather Underground. They got bought, then their parent company got bought, and now they have no actual weather information and just clickbait videos. It's very sad, but you can cobble together some tools that are freely available on the Internet and be aware of the current and upcoming weather, without being served a single ad!

Otherwise, iOS has a thing you can turn on that notifies you when it thinks it's going to start raining.

[sklargh]

https://open-meteo.com/en will let you create a very nice dashboard for yourself...very easy to use.

[yieldcrv]

Oh wow I did not notice that the weather app has maps of all area thermometers now

Thats what I used wunderground and dark sky for

can finally uninstall wunderground for good, thanks!

[soheil]

The iOS 16 beta Weather app has incredible features and down to the hour granularity even for future days.

[neon_electro]

That’s all the hope I have left. Bring on iOS 16, I suppose. RIP Dark Sky

[diebeforei485]

Is this the 16.1 beta, or the 16.0 release?

[soheil]

16.0 if you click on the day a pop up appears with an interactive graph broken down by hour on the x axis.

[Mandatum]

Recommend windy.com