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Ask HN: What is going on with Apple Weather?

39 points by contact9879 ↗ HN
For the past month and a half or so (I think ever since the iOS/iPadOS update that broke the weather app), Apple Weather has forecasted rain in the daily forecast without fail and sometimes even in the hourly forecast. I have only experienced about 7 days of rain since then. (7/45 = 16% accuracy, that would rank it far below any other forecast provider: https://forecastadvisor.com/Texas/Houston/77061/)

I am located in the Texas area and been between Houston and Dallas and Fort Worth multiple times throughout the past month and Apple Weather has forecasted rain every day. I eventually had to switch to another weather app because Apple Weather was unusable.

This is not a post to just hate on Apple Weather, but at this point, I had thought that the issue would’ve been realized and fixed by now. What is going on and is Apple going to fix it?

33 comments

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DHPersonal
My area is also similarly always labeled as being under a rainy weather forecast while the sources from which Apple claims to be pulling the information make no similar claims to precipitation.
eriklarson
I’m in Texas and have had the same question.
beckler
I’m on the latest iOS version and I’m experiencing the same. However, my wife is a few minor versions behind, and her‘s is much more accurate.
contact9879
I’ve switched to Carrot weather instead and it offers Apple Weather as a source which gives similar results as the main weather app. Seems to be something wrong with the weather API. I use Foreca as a source primarily now.
SkyPuncher
My understanding is the pandemic actually caused some serious gaps in weather forecasts. Some commercial flights transmit weather conditions to central authorities , which are extremely useful for building granular forecasts.

During the pandemic, commercial air traffic plummeted. While it has returned to normal levels, it seems the models are still missing some historical data.

contact9879
Interesting. Not sure that is the issue here though. No other weather forecasting source has had similar issues recently.
SkyPuncher
I’ve had issues with nearly all of them.

At the end of the day, most of these tools are simply displaying NOAA data in the user friendly format.

mobilio
Same here - i'm on iOS 14 and iOS15 (long story) while wife is on iOS16 (iPadOS) and we're debating same.

Seems that mine old versions are much more accurate.

tracerbulletx
I've also been experiencing weird behavior like that. Also the radar map fails to load a lot, and sometimes it looks like the radar animation plays backwards? Seems pretty unreliable. I've been using Windy instead.
contact9879
Windy has been great. I am in dire need of a quality weather app for Android in the same vein of Carrot for iOS and the old Dark Sky app. The foreca app is buggy and ugly, the Carrot app is severely handicapped, Weather Channel and Accuweather are more ads/news focused. While Windy is useful, its primary use as a weather map doesn't match my primary use case of daily and hourly forecasts.
spdif899
I've switched to iOS (and now use carrot due to the built in app's unreliability). Today weather was my go-to for years on Android: https://todayweather.co/
SkyPuncher
MyRadar was my go-to Android.

With that being said, nothing was good in the wake of DarkSky leaving.

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samwillis
I'm usually a proponent of Apple, but the failure to deliver the same usability as DarkSky after the acquisition is so disappointing.

With DarkSky you could open the app and without a single click have an overview of the next 24hr, and only a single click for detailed figures such as wind speed. As well as an overview of the next week.

Now with Apple Weather you have to click after opening the app to get to a proper 24h overview, and the one you get is so much worse that the DarkSky one.

I'm sure the DarkSky team have war stories about the transition to Apple and how much they wanted to keep/change.

Bitterly disappointed in it.

kranke155
Same here. Dark sky was the best app in the category and weather hasn’t gotten anywhere close.
paulcole
Seems to work fine for me in the Pacific Northwest.
contact9879
I realize my accuracy claim is not at all correct. Said more for reference.
seltzered_
While I doubt it has the accuracy of darksky, it's worth noting there's been an alternative website with a similar layout: https://merrysky.net
contact9879
I use merrysky all the time! It's a great resource and uses the https://pirateweather.net api. It's not as accurate as TWC or Accuweather or Foreca but I really like the layout.
threesevenths
It’s been terrible since the introduction of weather kit. It’s beyond useless.
SkyPuncher
Most people don’t understand how rain is actually forecast. The forecast applies to an entire area, not just your point on the map. That means it could rain somewhere in the area of the forecast and the forecast would be correct. However, your experience of the forecast could feel entirely wrong.

Even if you see a 100% chance of rain, your specific location could remain dry. Likewise, a 10% chance of rain could have just you being rained on all day.

I personally find that I need to combine a forecast with a radar to understand how the weather is actually going to pan out for a day.

Explanation of rain forecast: https://www.weather.gov/ffc/pop

tiffanyh
How I think about it is …

If the weather says “10% chance of rain”, what that means is in my city - there’s a 100% chance water will fall from the sky. But only 10% of us in the city will experience it.

SkyPuncher
That’s a really nice, practical way to think about it.

After all, most people are trying to figure out how it will impact their plans. That type of positioning really puts it into perspective.

DeRock
That’s not exactly what it means, it’s a blended percentage of both the chance of any rain in an area multiplied by the coverage of that rain over the affected area. So a 50% chance it will rain somewhere, and if it rains it might rain in 50% of the area, would result in a 25% overall chance of rain. See https://www.weather.gov/media/pah/WeatherEducation/pop.pdf
contact9879
I understand how rain is forecast. But Foreca, Weather Channel, and AccuWeather have not had similar issues. This is an issue with Apple Weather and their WeatherKit API forecasting rain no matter the actual conditions.
culopatin
This always happens in summer IMO.
contact9879
I've never experienced any weather source forecast rain for every single day of the summer.
saaaaaam
Interesting. I’ve been feeling for the past couple of months that Apple Weather is wildly inaccurate suddenly, and when I’ve mentioned this to a few other people they’ve all said “what, you too? I thought it was just me!”

That could just be Baader Meinhof but interesting that I’m now seeing it mentioned here. It’s out by about 6-7C on temperatures and often forecasts rain when there isn’t any.

dv_dt
I have similar inaccuracies from Apple Weather in temperature, but also failure to predicting rain when rain is on the regional forecast checked against the nws and actual rain outcomes. Worse than Dark Sky that Apple acquired.

I’m on the Southern CA area. And today no rain possible on Apple Weather, 40% shower on NWS.

bsaul
Same here ( france ), we talked about this a few weeks ago with a friend, and it's now common knowledge that the app is simply not good.
luos2
For me, in Central EU, Apple Weather is something you can not trust. It usually forecasts rain when there will be nothing, and nothing when it rains.

It is incorrect after the fact as well, ie. it says that there was no rain in the past 24 hours even if it was pouring. Another funny thing it does, it displays a warning about severe storms but forecasts 0 mm rain.

It's not something you can trust, at least here. It is so true we regularly joke about it in the family.

We have popular site here which usually is correct, so I am not sure what they are doing. I guess maybe their resolution of data is bad or just the data is bad.