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Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

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Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#51

Post by vsergeev »

zie wrote: post #48
vsergeev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the NWS API is missing machine readable condition codes/icons in the daily and hourly forecast, which is why it isn't available in briefsky. The API has nearly everything else, though. If I had a solution for those icons, I probably would have added support for their weather alerts too, and also made it the default for US locations. See here for notes on other unsupported providers: https://github.com/…

According to your link it's missing 2 things, and I would argue neither are true. Sunrise/sunset data can be calculate yourself: https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html As for the code/icons, there is indeed an 'icon' in the hourly forecast, for example: From this url: https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/PDT/31,35/forecast/hourly which returns an hourly forecast for someplace or other, there is this: "icon"…

The icon field is deprecated, no longer documented in the API, and also more complicated in practice, as it can mix multiple conditions, e.g. `...{day,night}/rain,30/snow,60?...`. The space of possible icons is also fairly large -- https://www.weather.gov/forecast-icons to get an idea -- and it's not clear what short string they all map to. So yeah, in theory you could parse and infer a weather condition out of that link, but as you can see it's pretty hacky and already deprecated. The API should really just return a code or enum (e.g. like a WMO code).

But maybe there's a cleaner way to infer it. PRs are always welcome.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#52

Post by vsergeev »

Leftium wrote: post #49
vsergeev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I'll add it to my list. At some point I was thinking of adding a location search too, just depends on a free & reliable geocoding API.

- https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/geocoding-api - https://openweathermap.org/api/geocoding-api I'm using the openweathermap geocoding API for https://uw.leftium.com/ (IP address -> lat/long -> location) Source code: https://github.com/Leftium/ultra-weather/blob/0f4ea58d2603f4...

+1 Thanks. It looks like the Open-Meteo one may be worth a shot since it doesn't require an API key and briefsky is client-side.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#54

Post by Casteil »

JZL003 wrote: post #23
JZL003 wrote: post #22

For any other person who wants more advanced weather, I like meteo-blue's multimodel graphs https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/multimodel/tex... Much more information dense, if less pretty but it's helpful to see a bunch of models to get a sense of the uncertainty. It's what meteorologists I know do often, and you can quickly learn which models are short vs long-term and uncheck them I do wish I could make…

Also meteograms are a nice consise way of getting a sense of the weather https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/meteogramweb/t... When I look at science data I don't look at lists of numbers, I don't know why that's always how weather is presented visually

100% - I love https://www.windy.com for this very reason. Their full meteogram gives you a really succinct/concise representation for all the data it's showing every 3h for 5+ days (wind, temp, dew cloud cover/levels, etc).

That said.. Windy's precipitation forecast figures haven't always been great around here.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#55

Post by redavni »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me why weather data is seemingly hard to get/provide? Isn’t data from the US government (weather.gov) in the public domain and completely free? What did Dark Sky and similar provide on top?

The answer is that it is not hard to get. The problem is that you are asking web developers not weather scientists.

The US provides free updated every 15 minute forecast for an absurd number of weather variables for every 3km square of the US in a nice GRIB file package. It is the gold standard on the free domain. Want a real api? Be prepared to pay real money. All Darksky did on top of this was interpolate that forecast data across time and the map.

Without an actual meteorologist on hand to guide the process, the forecast is probably going to be bad. NOAA and the weather community are just fine with the bar being high for entry. A proliferation of low effort/poor forecast web sites would just lead to them removing the realtime data from the public domain.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#56

Post by zie »

vsergeev wrote: post #51
zie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to your link it's missing 2 things, and I would argue neither are true. Sunrise/sunset data can be calculate yourself: https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html As for the code/icons, there is indeed an 'icon' in the hourly forecast, for example: From this url: https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/PDT/31,35/forecast/hourly which returns an hourly forecast for someplace or other, there is this: "icon"…

The icon field is deprecated, no longer documented in the API, and also more complicated in practice, as it can mix multiple conditions, e.g. `...{day,night}/rain,30/snow,60?...`. The space of possible icons is also fairly large -- https://www.weather.gov/forecast-icons to get an idea -- and it's not clear what short string they all map to. So yeah, in theory you could parse and infer a weather condition out of that…

There's also "shortForecast": "Partly Sunny"

I don't know why you think it's deprecated? I don't see that anywhere. They just updated the icons in 2015, which for govt API work is practically yesterday :)

I think it's just that the specifications document, like basically all documentation is out-dated. There are many fields in the output that are not in the documented spec.

My weather needs just call directly to api.weather.gov and have done so reliably for a year or two now, whenever the last API I was using started charging or broke or whatever happened to it(I don't even remember what API it was at this point). So I have no need of your project, but I wish you lots of success!

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#57

Post by vsergeev »

zie wrote: post #56
vsergeev wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The icon field is deprecated, no longer documented in the API, and also more complicated in practice, as it can mix multiple conditions, e.g. `...{day,night}/rain,30/snow,60?...`. The space of possible icons is also fairly large -- https://www.weather.gov/forecast-icons to get an idea -- and it's not clear what short string they all map to. So yeah, in theory you could parse and infer a weather condition out of that…

There's also "shortForecast": "Partly Sunny" I don't know why you think it's deprecated? I don't see that anywhere. They just updated the icons in 2015, which for govt API work is practically yesterday :) I think it's just that the specifications document, like basically all documentation is out-dated. There are many fields in the output that are not in the documented spec. My weather needs just call directly to api.…

They're deprecated under the "Specification" tab: the `/icons/...` endpoints in the endpoint list, and the `icon` field in the `GridpointForecast` schema. The `shortForecast` field is documented as `A brief textual forecast summary` and not exhaustively enumerated, so it's also technically not machine readable. If it's anything like the icons, there could potentially be 50+ of these. I really couldn't find anything resembling an overall conditions enum or code anywhere, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

In the meanwhile, I could try to get it working with nearly everything else and try to find a last minute hack for the icons.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#58

Post by yackback »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me why weather data is seemingly hard to get/provide? Isn’t data from the US government (weather.gov) in the public domain and completely free? What did Dark Sky and similar provide on top?

Relative to the prediction side (which Dark Sky is arguably most known for): Every day, NOAA collects billions of data points (20 TB) of data about the planet's weather, and throws it into their supercomputers to make a forecast. NOAA has the 49th and 50th fastest computers in the world. In fact, the two major applications of the original supercomputers were nuclear physics and the weather.

They make it all available at https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets, but as noted - since the data is so incredibly large and NOAAs already running stats on it... you can't really outcompute them.

[There are very very few CS applications with both a) more computing power and b) more real world impact than predicting weather and hurricanes. Maybe cancer research.]

20TB source: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/data-dive-five-noaa-databas...

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#59

Post by kseistrup »

Leftium wrote: post #47
O1111OOO wrote: post #25

For a long while, I had been looking for Weather Apps with great UIs. They seemed so hard to find. Now I have two that look great on the Desktop and easy on the eyes (ie; without the chaos I find on other sites): https://merrysky.net/ and https://briefsky.app/ Only tested on the Desktop but I'm finding I have to do a bit more work (vs MerrySky) - that is, I have to keep clicking each day. Usability could be improved…

I'm planning to rewrite https://uw.leftium.com/ . Any suggestions? I'm trying to figure out a good way to add 60-min forecast (precipitation in next hour.)

SI/metric units, please.

Re: Show HN: Briefsky – a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs

#60

Post by Leftium »

kseistrup wrote: post #59
Leftium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm planning to rewrite https://uw.leftium.com/ . Any suggestions? I'm trying to figure out a good way to add 60-min forecast (precipitation in next hour.)

SI/metric units, please.

One of the reasons for my app was to quickly switch between F/C.

Clicking the large temperature (in landscape mode) toggles between F/C. I think precipitation is always in mm, except for the short text summaries.

...but yes, making the units configurable was already requested and is planned in the rewrite.

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