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Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#21

Post by voidfunc »

clnq wrote: post #16

I always wondered why DarkSky was so popular. Was it the design? It was known to be generally inaccurate among meteorologists, while other apps (METAR+TAF especially) would be remarkably accurate. I don't intend this to be a jab at anyone's app preferences, but I'm very interested in the value proposition that hooked people.

Most users aren't meteorologists. I found the precip radar view good and it was smooth for projecting out a couple hours which was important for deciding if I wanted to golf or not because it wad easy to see if a storm was likely to clip my club. That's something none of the current apps I've tried since replicate nearly as well.

Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#22

Post by ck2 »

Change the lat/lon on this to yours but if their station isn't nearby accuracy wanes fast.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical...

I've become a fan of personal weather stations but of course if you are traveling that doesn't work (unless a startup wants to put a weather station into a phone/watch somehow)

Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#23

Post by WirelessGigabit »

2c2c2c wrote: post #5

Seems like the apple weather app is updated? seems to 'just work' at this point :-)

No. I live in an unincorporated town. Dark Sky vs Apple was 3 degree difference as Apple reverted to the town 'next door'. But we actually have different weather. Slightly cooler. And rain hits us later.

Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#28

Post by eps »

clnq wrote: post #16

I always wondered why DarkSky was so popular. Was it the design? It was known to be generally inaccurate among meteorologists, while other apps (METAR+TAF especially) would be remarkably accurate. I don't intend this to be a jab at anyone's app preferences, but I'm very interested in the value proposition that hooked people.

They were effectively first easy-to-use near-/short-term forecasting service.

It was also a true "indie" project with 2 (3?) guys with no relevant background deciding to tackle an annoyance in their own lives. They did it and it happened to work well. They did a kickstarter. Then they tried being aggressive with the growth and it didn't go so well.

Also their dataviz was really pretty. That helped.

Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#29

Post by adrinux »

drfuzzyness wrote: post #19
clnq wrote: post #16

I always wondered why DarkSky was so popular. Was it the design? It was known to be generally inaccurate among meteorologists, while other apps (METAR+TAF especially) would be remarkably accurate. I don't intend this to be a jab at anyone's app preferences, but I'm very interested in the value proposition that hooked people.

In rainy parts of the US such as the Pacific North West coast, having a thirty minute warning that it's about to rain is really handy. It can make the difference between biking home sopping wet or squeezing in between two downbursts of rain. The rest of the app was fine, but not great. It demanded constant attention as its "predictions" changed constantly.

This! It was that combination of rain radar and really obvious app specific audio alarms that no other weather app seems to understand.

I live in Scotland, a famously rainy country. We line dry our laundry outside and dark sky alerted me take it indoors before rain for years.

Then Apple took it away and my laundry regularly gets rained on.

The closest I've found for this functionality on Android is Rain Alarm. It has two flaws though. One is that it uses public rain radar data that only updates every 15 mins, so often you get an alert when its already started raining. The second is that it uses a circular search path, so you get false positive rain alerts that it's raining 3km away when that rain shower is actually passing by and will not hit us.

For these features Dark Sky was unique and accurate enough.

Re: Ask HN: DarkSky Alternatives?

#30

Post by petodo »

Are you asking about API or just about weather data source for forecast?

I was comparing many data sources over many weeks and my results in Prague were Aeris weather most accurate (least false positives/negatives for rain), then gap and Foreca and MET Norway same and then big gap and you have very bad sources like Dark Sky, AccuWeather, Weatherbit and Open weather which are unusable.

As for the mobile apps on Android I use Weawow (has all 3 most accurate sources) and Today Weather (no Aeris, but had Foreca and MET Norway).

I'd recommend these two apps and comparing sources for few weeks to find out which one is the most accurate for your location, because accuracy varies across different locations, so there won't be single correct universal answer what you should use.

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