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by chatmasta 692 days ago
You’re right, this one is missing. Although I’m skeptical of the utility (and accuracy) of something as precise as “percentage of cloud cover,” compared to what is available in the app, namely “clear, cloudy, mostly sunny, etc.”

Is there a meaningful difference between 25% cloud cover and 35%? Or is it better to just give names to the “conditions” at buckets of 25%, 50%, 75%, etc?
4 comments
joeconway 692 days ago
in my experience its more like: 0-5% - Sunny; 5-60% - Partly Cloudy; 60-100% - Cloudy;

I've not seen other descriptors, and to view it changing over time its just on the timeline as a sun, sun+cloud & cloud emoji's

It's not useful other than as a binary 'is it cloudy' which in Bay Area weather it is a meaningful difference between 30% and 60% coverage

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shagie 691 days ago
The best cloud cover that I've found is yr.no

For example (and it always takes a bit for me to find it) https://www.yr.no/en/details/table/2-4887398/United%20States... (and https://www.yr.no/en/details/graph/2-4887398/United%20States... )

And here's their API - https://developer.yr.no/featured-products/forecast/

It breaks it down by overall, low, medium, and high clouds.

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SkyPuncher 691 days ago
At the fringes, there is a meaningful difference. The center 50%, not really.

A 95% coverage day is a bit different than a 100% coverage day. Particularly, when it comes to rain and wind expectations.

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fkyoureadthedoc 691 days ago
How is that difference meaningful? What actions are you going to take differently at 95% cloud coverage vs 100%? I can't think of anything I'd do differently if I was expecting 100% cloud coverage tomorrow to wake up and find that it was actually at 95%.
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chatmasta 691 days ago
Yeah, and I’d argue that if the difference is meaningful to you, then you probably want something more accurate than what a consumer-grade weather service can provide. So it would be borderline irresponsible of Apple to even give you the false confidence of some precise measurement of cloud cover.
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ShroudedNight 692 days ago
I would expect certain segments of aviation to find the additional granularity critical.
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chatmasta 692 days ago
Presumably they shouldn’t be using a consumer weather service and mobile app.
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