Serious question: what other national or global-level weather services are freely available via API to end users? With AccuWeather going all-in on premium access and the NWS/NOAA being sabotaged, is there anywhere else with freely available high-quality data out there in readily-ingestible formats?
I imagine there is a lot of new pressure on public APIs now that there’s an explosion of vibe coded projects accessing them (some probably quite haphazardly).
I ran a weather site for a year or so (that also showed YESTERDAY'S weather, that was the key feature) using visual crossing's data, until someone started scraping all the cities of the world every hour and running up my costs (visual crossing is pay-per-data-point) so I had to shut it down.
It surprises me that in 2025 we can't just support global free weather data as some kind of cooperative service. It's not like it's high-bandwidth or even all that high-volume.
- It uses open-meteo's API. Before open-meteo, I tried with OpenWeatherMap's API.
- However, besides requiring an additional call for each previous day's data, OpenWeatherMap's One Call API only supported local time zones for current and forecast data. So depending on the timezone and time, there could be a big gap in the data that needed to be filled with timezone math (and extra API calls. The original DarkSky One Call API did not have this issue.)
As @otterly already posted there has, is and will always be weather.gov
As a matter of fact US Commerce department provides many API services including free geolocation (wuuut) via census.gov among so many services
A side note about Trump and politics/shmolitix etc: his stageshow budget cuts will have short term impact but will likely be repaired when the House flips and Dems make gains in the Senate after the mid terms. A lot of White Americans living at or below the poverty line will be hurt by the scheduled cuts and will have questions n' thoughts, but man this Epstein footcannon-nuclear-grenade-launcher of Trump's just might be the thing that ends Republican Party's 10 year abusive relations with an objectively adjudicated and multifacted criminal
Another one bites the dust. I've used weather underground api, yahoo weather api, dark sky api, and all of them have gone from free to paid (or just not public anymore) over the years. Currently using pirate weather - https://pirateweather.net/en/latest/
The internet as we know it (blogs etc) is going to stop existing and this will just turn into an protocol layer communicating between said walled gardens
Bit miffed that the big tech orgs basically killed something that could be organic & community driven. If somehow a path could have been found to maintain and possibly even scale that sort of grassroot internet I think it could have turned into something unimaginably awesome. Big tech actively killed that trajectory
Semi off-topic, but does anybody know a good weather radar app that has coverage outside the US (with particular interest in Europe)?
Apple/Dark Sky seems to only cover a very limited number of countries (despite many more providing radar data under open access), and zoom.earth seems to be shutting down precipitation radar by September.
It is truly remarkable how some of those affluent & resourceful devs in the world come here to complain about an API that now requires a subscription.
Somebody, somewhere in the world has to build & maintain this API. Somebody's job depends on it. If you use it and you find it useful, you can afford to pay whatever they're willing to charge.
Otherwise, build & maintain your own. Make sure you never charge for it!!
Enshitification and hyperinflation marches on, powered by the leadership of DOGE.
I used ForecastBar until they went to a rent-only-but-never-own model where a frickin' weather app has tiers. WTF!? Don't get me started on the weather.com apps either.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] threadYes. Yes, I'm sure you are.
It surprises me that in 2025 we can't just support global free weather data as some kind of cooperative service. It's not like it's high-bandwidth or even all that high-volume.
- It uses open-meteo's API. Before open-meteo, I tried with OpenWeatherMap's API.
- However, besides requiring an additional call for each previous day's data, OpenWeatherMap's One Call API only supported local time zones for current and forecast data. So depending on the timezone and time, there could be a big gap in the data that needed to be filled with timezone math (and extra API calls. The original DarkSky One Call API did not have this issue.)
As a matter of fact US Commerce department provides many API services including free geolocation (wuuut) via census.gov among so many services
A side note about Trump and politics/shmolitix etc: his stageshow budget cuts will have short term impact but will likely be repaired when the House flips and Dems make gains in the Senate after the mid terms. A lot of White Americans living at or below the poverty line will be hurt by the scheduled cuts and will have questions n' thoughts, but man this Epstein footcannon-nuclear-grenade-launcher of Trump's just might be the thing that ends Republican Party's 10 year abusive relations with an objectively adjudicated and multifacted criminal
The internet as we know it (blogs etc) is going to stop existing and this will just turn into an protocol layer communicating between said walled gardens
Bit miffed that the big tech orgs basically killed something that could be organic & community driven. If somehow a path could have been found to maintain and possibly even scale that sort of grassroot internet I think it could have turned into something unimaginably awesome. Big tech actively killed that trajectory
Apple/Dark Sky seems to only cover a very limited number of countries (despite many more providing radar data under open access), and zoom.earth seems to be shutting down precipitation radar by September.
The radar data is from the RainViewer API: https://www.rainviewer.com/api.html
- Hmm... it seems this API is also being limited/discontinued...
- I think past radar will continue to work, but only to zoom level 10/7.
- And the future 30-90 minutes of predicted radar will no longer work.
My project was inspired by: https://merrysky.net (And the OG Dark Sky UI)
https://github.com/bhickey/cloudyfs
Somebody, somewhere in the world has to build & maintain this API. Somebody's job depends on it. If you use it and you find it useful, you can afford to pay whatever they're willing to charge.
Otherwise, build & maintain your own. Make sure you never charge for it!!
I used ForecastBar until they went to a rent-only-but-never-own model where a frickin' weather app has tiers. WTF!? Don't get me started on the weather.com apps either.