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Comment by morley | Hacker News Reader

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&...

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

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

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

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.

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

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).

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

They also have a really nice api.

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

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)

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)

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

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

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

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.

> They had a really lovely API

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

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

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.

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.

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