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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

Et al - maybe, but Dark Sky built their own near-future "hyperlocal" forecasting engine and they were the first ones to do that. They basically invented the whole genre.

Perhaps they expanded into repackaging NOAA data now, but that's not what Dark Sky is about.

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Hyperlocal forecasting, who just ejected most of the world from their data collection pool.

IIRC they built the models with user data, but stopped collecting from phones because so many different sensors are used for rH and temp in phones plus being in pockets, battery temp, etc meant the data had too much variance. Even though I hate that they did this bc it's my favourite weather app, it actually would make sense to just use iphones if they were going to start collecting that data again since all the hardware is the same.

The barometer data that comes from phones (both Android and iOS) is extremely resilient and there is a lot of value to be derived from it. Ongoing research by Cliff Mass and team (at UW) shows that machine learning can help bias-correct and error-correct barometric pressure data on the fly with very good results. That data can also be assimilated into WRF to make forecasts with higher accuracy.

I work on a related app to do that barometer data on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe... (US only for now).

I feel obligated to point to Cliff's blog, it's a great resource especially if you live in the northwest https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the info and link, it looks like All Clear is positioned well to pick up dark sky android users. I'm going to give it a try.

Oh they were collecting data from phones? Sounds like a good excuse to delete the app before they spike it anyways.

http://jackadam.github.io/2011/how-dark-sky-works/

They used an ML/statistical approach to forecasting, rather than physical modeling. They had some secret sauce in doing fast ML on phones, before libraries like CoreML existed.

> they were the first ones to do that.

AccuWeather has been doing that for ages with MinuteCast. Dark Sky just looked more 21st century and was better marketed, probably

Careful there with unsubstantiated statements.

DarkSky - Nov 2011 - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-hyper...

MinuteCast - Mar 2014 - https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/24293762

That is, it's the exact opposite. MinuteCast is a rip of DarkSky.

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