Webapp for comparing weather forcast providers | Hacker News Reader

Webapp for comparing weather forcast providers

weather.simonton.app

47 pointsducktective22 comments

Quick question. Does anyone else get annoyed seeing the current temperature being greater than the high temperature for the day? Same thing with the low.

I’m not sure what it means - maybe the weathermen want you to know what they guessed? I’m not looking at the weather as a sports book of betting entries, I’m looking at the weather because I want facts.

You’re comparing a measurement to a prediction (current temp to high temp).

But yes! It’s very annoying.

There’s not a clear and simple solution though. You could increase the daily high, but then hourly data would never show/predict the daily high. Unless you made the current hour prediction = current measurement. But what if the prediction for the hour is 90% chance of rain (starting at say XX:43), you wouldn’t want to just override that with 90°F and sunny.

In addition to this the forecast for the day could be "Rain" but the hourly forecasts often reveal it is unlikely to rain for most if not the entire day.

So? That’s statistics. In 100 years you would predict one 100-year flood to happen, but each year the odds are unlikely.

The high is recorded is always recorded in a certain location but a local maximum can be in a different microclimate.

A suggestion:

If you input a location outside the US or Liberia use Celsius. (Better yet do the opposite of that and default to C and switch to F for US and Liberia)

I like the idea but this is really hard to read, could use some UI/UX lovin.

What did you find challenging to read, out of interest?

I figured a visible graph key to explain the colours could have been useful, although depending on location that could detract from the space available to render the datapoints.

(the default colours and theme also seem relatively sensible, and the mappings are visible under the "Conditions" menu item. I like that daylight hours are subtly hinted using background shading)

A couple of the issues I see:

1. If one turns on all the sources many of the sources will use same color line.

2. The dark theme doesn’t have enough contrast, the font is gray on a black background.

There are other issues that are hard to put to words, I look at the graph and it’s hard to find a specific date or time.

Higher contrast option for us old folks please

More providers would be neat! There are apps like this out there already but they all mostly focus on the US. Most weather companies are also US based and report the weather very accurate there, but not around the globe.

It’s hard to find a good comparison for other countries, for stuff like which service to use in third party weather apps (carrot)

Open weather is good enough for, I'm living in the Netherlands

I made this weather website as my project.

https://thisisguillermo.github.io/EA_WEATHER_SYSTEM/

But this doesnt tell me what weather provider to use for my third party weather apps

nope, horribly inaccurate in Prague, Dark Sky and Weather Underground are miles better

Would be great to add option for more services, e.g. yr.no, and maybe custom ones for local weather. Another interesting idea would be gathering prediction data and comparing to actual (historical) data later, that should find most precise weather forecast service.

>Another interesting idea would be gathering prediction data and comparing to actual (historical) data later, that should find most precise weather forecast service.

I've been interested in doing this for awhile, but I've had trouble finding a data source of past predictions from their sources. It's also a frustrating exercise to try to search for online.

If anyone has data sources or additional context/keywords available, I'd be interested!

For a couple years I ran an automated script which grabbed the 10 day forecast from a weather site and was used for energy forecasting at a manufacturer. I archived the data after scraping it. As you'd guess, the variability of the weather is notably higher 10 days out, but the forecasts were remarkably accurate on a short term.

There is https://www.forecastadvisor.com for US locations.

anything beyond 48 hours is pure snake oil

inaccurate irrelevant sources

you are better off installing Weawow, go to screen with selection of data sources where you are loaded at same time forecast from multiple relevant providers, so you just screenshot it and check weather through day or just remember it to compare later with forecast

I don't really care whether it will be 18 or 20C, but if you tell me it's gonna rain and other provider says it's not gonna rain it makes big difference in my day planning

from free apps also Weather M8 provides many sources, personally I'd prefer Simone WM8 layout but sadly it doesn't have Dark Sky and vice versa Weawow doesn't have WU so have to keep two apps

what I've personally done it's excel sheet, write down forecast over few weeks and then checked which one was the most accurate

the results for Prague confirmed Weather Underground is among the best (2nd best), but I was shocked by winner - Dark Sky - so now I just keep two apps Weawow for Dark Sky and Weather M8 for WU, their forecast usually match but when it comes to rain I'm going with Dark Sky

So, this is pulling in various providers.

But it doesn’t seem to be tracking the accuracy of those providers over time, as compared to actual meteorological conditions. If a particular provider has a lower average or RMS error over time, that seems like it would be really good information to know, yes?

Is anyone else doing that?

If you don’t get the weather you want, try a different app

windy.com

Similar data sources, amazing UX

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