Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

blog.darksky.net

47 pointsdivbzero52 comments

For those of you looking for an alternative, I'd recommend Windy[0][1][2]. It's UI can be slightly quirky but the weather models, features and visualisations are superb. If you're specifically after marine and wind forecasts, PredictWind[3] is about as good as it gets.

[0] Browser: https://www.windy.com/

[1] Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windyty.an...

[2] iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windy-com/id1161387262

[3] https://www.predictwind.com/ https://www.predictwind.com/apps/

I’d recommend Carrot Weather because the commentary is hilarious, especially if you set the personality to “overkill.”

I came to suggest the same; windy.app is fantastic.

These days I use the "hourly graphical forecast" from the National Weather Service. I've found it to be at least as accurate as Dark Sky and easy enough to display 3 images side by side and refresh periodically to always have a 6-day forecast at hand. The display is more informative and compact than any other weather site or app I've tried. There's also a tabular version that's easy enough to scrape if you want to customize it.

As an example, here's the forecast for zip code 12345: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.8099&lon=-7...

I think (?) the audience for this site is global, so you can't really say "National" weather service. Darksky works around the world (though I presume not truly everywhere). Glad to hear they are extending non proprietary access to their Weather Kit, that's an encouraging move.

thanks for posting. This looks really good.

It looks like just they extended the dates at which they are shutting things down. This is great news for me because I use their API for a small app and have been putting off updating it to something new, so now I have quite a bit more time.

A developer has started an impressive and ambitious project called Pirate Weather, which I planning on using moving forward, for those looking for "drop-in" alternatives: https://pirateweather.net/

Another alternative is OpenWeatherMap: https://openweathermap.org/api/one-call-3

It's not quite a drop-in replacement, but it's pretty close. They have a free plan for 1,000 calls/day.

The specific Dark Sky feature no one has cloned adequately is the microforecast that says "it will rain on you in 8 minutes". There's a zillion apps that do a decent job of hourly and daily weather forecasts. But the particular rain warning was something Dark Sky was uniquely good at.

Rain Alarm on Android comes close, and even uses Dark Sky data (for now). But the UI isn't as good and the predictions aren't as accurate.

PS: understand that if you join Apple your work will be consumed and digested by the company in a way that renders your personal identity invisible. This is true both for companies like Dark Sky and for individuals.

MyRadar on iOS does this very well. Has notifications on when rain will start, estimate on duration, warnings if storms are predicted in the next 24 hours, lightning nearby notifications, etc. It appears to be available for Android. I subscribe to MyRadar Pro and find it quite worth it to support the development.

Is it using Dark Sky data behind the scenes?

Dark Sky is not among the licenses and attributions. I suspect they generate their end product from various other data sources, much like Dark Sky did.

There is an app for Garmin watches called "Minutecast" which has been pretty accurate at predicting rain periods when it can get my location correct (does not work as well in remote areas that may have few weather stations, based on my personal experience).

I wonder why this is. It would pretty trivial to implement because everyone is using the same sources for radar and storm velocity/vector.

I manually guesstimate this all the time using PYKL3 (excellent radar app).

I use Drops on iOS for this exact reason - it's been very accurate from my experience (I think there is an Android equivalent)

MyRadar on iOS will give you short-term rain warnings.

The (2020) is a bit misleading. The latest update is actually current, and discusses deprecation of the app and service for iOS.

I am looking forward to the new WeatherKit API, but, like many of yesterday’s announcements, we’ll need to learn more. I’ve become quite cautious, when it comes to “exciting new APIs,” from Apple.

This headline as it currently stands ("Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)") is a bit misleading, as the relevant update was posted June 6, 2022 and is announcing the official sunset date for Dark Sky - not just the acquisition.

I read it as saying that dark sky's new home is the ios 16 weather app and the weatherkit api.

What's the play with Dark Sky and their API?

Apple just launched the Weather API, and it's just Dark Sky rebranded, and slightly cheaper pricing. But why?

I had expected either:

- No location permissions needed to get basic weather data, to reduce location permission use by apps when it's only for weather.

- Free weather API to lock in developers on Apple platforms.

I'm wondering the same thing. I was surprised they even released a public API. I thought for sure it would be limited to iOS/macOS apps only. It does require a developers account now - which means an upfront cost for anyone who isn't in the Developer program. And the pricing tiers aren't as friendly as before. But the free tier is much higher now (500,000 now vs 31,000 with DarkSky). Hopefully they don't jack the price up in the future.

> No location permissions needed to get basic weather data, to reduce location permission use by apps when it's only for weather.

This seems tricky. The response currently returns the latitude/longitude, so it could be a possible way for an app to get around requiring location permissions. Even if they excluded that, there are other data points that could probably help narrow things down, particularly when there is an active weather alert, because those tend to specify locations.

I rely on a awesome android app[0] for my photography, it's just a big table of data like Low, Med, High cloud cover, which you can use to predict sunsets/rises. It uses the Dark Sky api. Will android apps be allowed continued access to this API? If not, I'm screwed. Unless anyone knows another source for this type of detailed weather data?

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.firstlight...

The developer documentation[1] says "REST APIs can be used for websites and other platforms" so it looks like you can use WeatherKit in your Android App, although the API has slightly changed from the Dark Sky API.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/

> Will android apps be allowed continued access to this API?

Yes, WeatherKit site mentions that "REST APIs can be used for websites and other platforms."

https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/

According to the article:

> The Dark Sky API and website will continue to function until March 31st, 2023.

So your app has that long.

How they can be “integrated”, I don’t know, as Dark Sky and Apple weather give totally different forecasts for where I live, both usually inaccurate. If it’s the same data, it’s being processed differently - but the forecasts are so different, I don’t see how it can be.

Maybe they just mean in the US, and international customers will have to make do with an approximation?

The app update will likely be included with iOS 16.

I doubt that. They've probably been working on international support. DarkSky's original API primarily used NOAA data, which would explain why it's not as accurate outside of the U.S. if it still uses that

This old blog post from one of the creators discusses it: https://jackadam.github.io/2011/how-dark-sky-works/

I don't believe the Weather app in iOS 15 /fully/ uses Dark Sky; just for some things. But that appears to change in iOS 16 with /all/ the data coming from WeatherKit (aka Dark Sky).

Edit: Here's the support page that details this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211777

It doesn't. I still get "weather channel" as source

Dark Sky has been incredibly accurate for me in the UK (I've tested this daily as I need minute-level accuracy for weather daily over a large area).

I really hope they integrate it into default weather well, in a way that it remains unchanged to current forecasts from Dark Sky.

They already have integrated it in a pretty reasonable way. The only thing that's missing is some of the alternative views for the hourly forecast, it's possibly a feature that wasn't as widely used (or as accurate as temp/conditions/precipitation) but as someone who burns easily, I do miss having e.g. hourly UVI forecasts.

This is available in the updated weather app in iOS 16. Each tile of information is clickable with nice hourly graphs. For example, clicking on the UV Index tile will now show an hourly graph of the UV Index, and lets you cycle across each day through the week.

It's interesting that they'll continue to offer API with the new WeatherKit API.

I have an impression that Dark Sky API was very popular with developers and have been wondering what stood out for them among many other weather APIs on the market.

It was the best weather API I've ever used, for a few reason:

1. Pricing. It was affordable and straight-forward pricing. There wasn't a huge "tier bump" - I think it was like a flat fee per 1000 requests after the free alotment.

2.You always could expect the same response, regardless of location or date. You could get an hourly forecast 3 years into the future, or 20 years in the past. Most other weather API will give you hourly only from "now" into the next few days. Or you can get daily for the next ten days or something like that. So you had to build logic around into your app. With DarkSky I got the same response no matter the day, time, or location. So it was much simpler to deal with.

3. Accuracy. I was always amazed at how accurate it was.

Thanks for the notes - it's really appreciated.

That's too bad - I really like what Dark Sky has done in terms of bringing all weather information to one spot and being able to see radar and then creating expectation of rain over the next hour.

Seems like I am about to lose all that functionality.

Well done Dark Sky team on building a great app - I hope that against all odds Apple decides to keep all the great work you've done and integrate it well!

All and every weather data that ANY weather company uses is provided, for free, by the US Government [0]

[0] https://www.weather.gov/

Dark Sky augmented their data with user reports and sensor data inside of the phones. There was a time during the summer of 2019 where I was able to impress friends by accurately predicting when rain would start and stop down to the minute based on the rain notifications I would get.

When Apple bought them and shut down the Android app they threw away all the data Android users were giving them and Dark Sky became almost exactly the same as every other weather API.

It seems like replacing "the android users who used this app" with "every iPhone user" would increase their data acquisition rather than reduce it

Perhaps in the US that is true, but "All" and "any" doesn't extend to other countries very well.

In the UK https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ power a lot of apps, in Norway it is https://www.yr.no/nb . I'm sure most countries have their own weather providing service.

I don't believe this is true. DarkSky aggregated data from various sources. They also provided "hyper local" forecasts which were very accurate - I don't think NWS has anything like this. And I don't believe the NWS provides weather outside of the US - when I try to get the forecast for Mexico City, for example, I get "Data Unavailable For Requested Point" (https://api.weather.gov/points/19.4333,-99.1333)

If what you claim was true, apps would at least be consistent with each other. This couldn't be further from reality.

What I see in Dark Sky or Weather app is very different from what I see e.g. in Windy. Where I am now Dark Sky is almost completely wrong (neither real-time conditions nor predictions), while Windy manages to at least show accurate radar data and lets me make a short-term forecast myself.

Every app makes its own "forecast" based on their own "algorithms", which is why there's a discrepancy between different apps.

It uses data from NOAA, among others.

https://darksky.net/attribution

Does it provide weather in Italy?

Yes.

Detailed weather data and analysis is not free for many countries other than the US.

I am using both apps and Dark Sky still has a much more micro level forecast and is much more accurate than Apple Weather.

It makes sense that they'd offer a basic weather app that's suitable for 80% of the market, and then let third-party devs fill in the niches for the rest.

I don't think wanting accurate weather forecasts is "niche". It's just a quality difference, like a VGA monitor vs 4K monitor.

A lot of people cancel their plans because normal weather apps tell them it's going to rain, but actually that was somewhere else in the city.

I've seen a picnic get entirely ruined, the tent/awning blown away and everyone drenched, kids crying, etc., because of the lack of a weather microforecast.

Is anyone using recent advances in machine learning to improve weather prediction?

Could transformers help?

Last time I tried darksky I was redirected to this weird login page with a cryptic message and strange screeching noises.... Glad to see it's back to normal.

EDIT: Seems like that was another TLD.

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