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Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

brolly.sh

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Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#71

Post by echoangle »

esseph wrote: post #63
echoangle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get that reason, couldn’t you just use the location name as a field in the database just like you use the short code right now? Where’s the additional API call on lookup coming from?

Re-read their response. They answered both these questions.

I still don’t get it.

Situation a: Someone searches for location XYZ. The geocoding API returns lat and Lon and canonical name ABC. You save that and the slugified name abc in your DB. (If the API doesn’t return a name, you can use XYZ instead of ABC). You return slug abc to the user.

Situation b: Someone requests weather for location at slug abc. You look in your DB, ask the weather API for the weather at lat/lon and return that to the user.

Situation c: Someone searches for a place that happens to already exist in the DB. You geocode the search term and get a lat/lon pair that’s already in the DB so you return the saved slug.

How is that different than using a shortcode? In which situation are you doing a geocoding API request you don’t need to do with the current system?

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#72

Post by jsax »

simonjgreen wrote: post #67

This is really pleasing to use, lovely work :) Also, wanted to note I appreciate your stance on AI: > I manually designed the site, defined its architecture, structure etc. > I have however used AI to implement significant portions, whilst keeping the most interesting bits to work on myself. > I have mixed feelings about AI. I wouldn't have had the time to build this site without it, and use it heavily in my day job…

Thanks for taking a look!

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#73

Post by Symbiote »

hliyan wrote: post #53
jsax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a few pieces of feedback for plain text, and it’s definitely something I’ll look at adding. OOI, would you expect the output to include a single days weather (like the site does now), multiple, or options for both?

Perhaps similar to a command line utility? Arguments could be passed as URL or query parameters. And perhaps a /help route can return the supported arguments.

I suggest something like traintimes.org.uk, which accepts parameters as URL segments:

https://traintimes.org.uk/vic/brighton/10:30/monday

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#75

Post by bthallplz »

I love the graphs, it's a very neat approach!

I also greatly appreciate getting to see the past few days' history for my location - too many weather sites are only really forward-looking, and I sometimes want to compare to a prior day when the current day feels different somehow.

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#76

Post by Leftium »

bthallplz wrote: post #75

I love the graphs, it's a very neat approach! I also greatly appreciate getting to see the past few days' history for my location - too many weather sites are only really forward-looking, and I sometimes want to compare to a prior day when the current day feels different somehow.

Do you know any other weather sites that show historical weather?

I thought my https://weather-sense.leftium.com was the only current app to do this.

I wrote about this over a decade ago: https://blog.leftium.com/2013/12/how-to-display-temperature-...

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#77

Post by Leftium »

jsax wrote: post #6
devindotcom wrote: post #4

This is cool and I appreciate how compact it is. I'd love to have this as a regular load on my desktop. My only note would be that the precipitation graph feels unnecessarily bulky - wouldn't it work with the same type of horizontal graph seen for the ones below it? I know precipitation demands somewhat more precision and immediacy, but you could also do a variable graph - left half next hour, right half next 12 hour…

Thanks for the feedback! I agree, it’s definitely something to work on as it takes up a considerable amount of vertical space. I found the precipitation chart challenging as you need to present both the forecasted precipitation, and the potential likelihood of the precipitation occurring. Something I’ve considered is using a horizontal graph with different shades of grey through black in each bar to represent the pro…

I think you may be able just drop the precipitation chance. While the precipitation chance is interesting, I tend to not experience any actual rain even if the predicted chance is 90+ percent. Even if there is rain, usually the amount is not worth bringing an umbrella for.

My https://weather-sense.leftium.com also uses open-meteo for weather data. And I've been comparing how precipitation amount/chance forecasts compare to real life experience.

Look at how vastly different the precipitation chance and amount were for Seoul the past few days: https://weather-sense.leftium.com/?n=seoul According to the chance, it was raining non-stop 48+ hours. The precipitation bars give a much better idea when actual precipitation occurred.

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#78

Post by Leftium »

andrepd wrote: post #31
firasd wrote: post #9

Very interesting. The past few days' trend is so common in small talk and general weather discourse ("it was warmer last week") but underrated in weather apps. It's helpful that Open-Meteo provides that data This output is incidentally perfectly context engineered for LLMs too; I pasted the Delhi page contents into Arena .ai and asked "what's the gist" and qwen3.6-plus said (among other things) " A hot, humid day wit…

Yes, I'm very annoyed that I cannot look at historical data (even from the past couple of days) in weather websites!

Open Meteo lets you query historical weather data from as old as 1940[1].

They have the only weather API I know of that can get both forecast and historical weather with just a single call[2]

I use Open Meteo for most of the data for https://weather-sense.leftium.com

(If you configure a single constant[3], you can get the max 90 days of historical data with the forecast!)

[1]: https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/historical-weather-api

[2]: https://open-meteo.com/en/docs

[3]: https://github.com/Leftium/weather-sense/blob/fefecb05974065...

Re: Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

#79

Post by Leftium »

jsax wrote: post #50
weatherphan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrific project, thank you! Use-cases will vary widely. For example if I used Brolly for sailing, I'd want wind speed in kts and wind direction as well as dew point, and I'd want a recent timeseries of air pressure to give an idea of the synoptic-scale situation. Of course these may be far outside your original use-cases. I think when people get a hold of Brolly, they're going to love it immediately, and t…

Thanks! I’ve also got a long list of additional data I’d like to see, such as sunrise / sunset times and astrological activity like upcoming meteor showers etc. I’m starting to think about dedicated sub pages that cover these use cases, with a single section on the main page that links into it. A sailing based page could definitely work here!

I think the most useful data to add is the 60-min precipitation forecast.

Unfortunately open-meteo doesn't offer this.

So https://weather-sense.leftium.com uses the 60-min forecast from OpenWeather. But you have to specifically request it because the free-tier quota is not as generous. (I think Apple's WeatherKit may also offer this data, but I was unable to get WeatherKit to work at all)

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After that, the wind is important for people who like outdoor activities. For example, Kayak rentals are paused when it gets too windy. On the other hand, kite boarders like it when it's windier.

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