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Acme Weather

acmeweather.com

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Re: Acme Weather

#121

Post by counters »

pavon wrote: post #109
lotsofpulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dew point and relative humidity, along with temperature and wind, are crucial measures to predicting how you will feel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity#Relative_humidity In the US, the 100th meridian is a popular demarcation for the half of the country that experiences high humidity versus the other half that experiences low humidity. It is why 100F in Phoenix, Arizona i…

Do any feel-like estimates take cloud cover into consideration? It doesn't seem like it, but in a high altitude desert like NM, it is a huge factor. Furthermore, the magnitude of the effect varies depending on the day of year and time of day (how much atmosphere the sun passes through), so you can't just mentally add 10 degrees or something. And it isn't just based on the immediate conditions - if it has been cloudy…

> Do any feel-like estimates take cloud cover into consideration?

No, usually not, because they're usually just simple toys combining a heat index and wind chill scale.

There _is_ an official metric used for estimating heat stress that accounts for cloud cover - the Wet-bulb Globe Temperature (e.g. https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt). This is what is used, for instance, in literature analyzing the impact that future climate change might have on heat stress and mortality risk during heat waves. It's also used by some professional sports programs to monitor risk for crowds and athletes, as well as commonly used by OSHA and other regulatory agencies looking at worker exposure to heat hazards.

Re: Acme Weather

#122

Post by Sgt_Apone »

wlonkly wrote: post #110
greatgib wrote: post #42

We don't care about a Weather app. Very easy to do and there are millions of it. What is missing is good freely accessible data /api for weather info. Most free one are disappearing and frustratingly in most countries, the weather agency you pay with your tax will not provide it for you.

I care! I have to cross-reference multiple apps to get a good detailed forecast, a "minutecast" of precipitation, and Canadian humidex and windchill numbers. I haven't tried this one yet because I'm a little confused why it didn't offer me a free trial, but if it gives me all of that then I am sold.

I think it’s a bug for Canadian users as it doesn’t offer me a trial either. Or they just don’t do trials here.

Re: Acme Weather

#123

Post by counters »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
imiric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weather requires ongoing costs. I strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data, a negligible amount of IT infrastructure, and their employees. Considering that there are many free weather APIs, and that a polished frontend can be built by a single person, what exactly are the overheads? T…

> strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data No. But I'd suspect a tabula rasa approach to weather–particularly given it hasn't been rolled out globally in one go–incorporates satellite data, local measurements, et cetera . Again, that may not take constant subscriprtion. But it does take…

> No. But I'd suspect a tabula rasa approach to weather–particularly given it hasn't been rolled out globally in one go–incorporates satellite data, local measurements, et cetera.

There most likely won't ever be such an effort - even in companies that are targeting verticalization of the "weather supply chain" (proprietary observations + models + decision support tools) - if only because it would be utterly foolish to exclude the vast amounts of data collected by government agencies and the wide variety of players in the weather enterprise. At best, verticalized weather companies can produce niche value over baseline from the single modality of proprietary data they collect.

The infrastructure for observing and forecasting the weather is incredibly sophisticated, and has been evolving for about 150 years at this point. The quality of contemporary numerical weather prediction likely doesn't leave much headroom towards the threshold of fundamental physical limitations on predictability. This is why there are groans and eye rolls from the weather community each time a new player steps forward with yet-another-AI-model-trained-on-ERA5-reanalysis and boasts some comically small improvement in average forecast skill.

With all that being said, there's likely an exciting frontier opening up as the AI models push towards encompassing data assimilation. But the applications that start to become extremely interesting there won't have any noticeable impact on average forecast quality for your typical weather app.

Re: Acme Weather

#124

Post by counters »

imiric wrote: post #48
cryptoz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you collect any data?? There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones. A…

> I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones. Alright, fair point. That could be a reasonable use case. But judging by their advertised "Community reports" feature, Acme doesn't seem to be doing this. And even if they did, this feature should be opt-in, and their privacy policy should only apply for those users. > Also, pretty much every day, all the app…

> Weather forecasts have always been an inexact science

Weather forecasting is anything but "an inexact science." It's extremely exact up to the limitations and assumptions you impose on your model due to resource constraints.

And yes - I assume that this is what you mean by "an inexact science." But still in 2026 I regularly meet people who think that weather forecasting is the same as astrology, completely ignorant of massive amount of physical scientific understanding that goes into it.

Re: Acme Weather

#126

Post by Woodrow503 »

Amazing. Just downloaded and will happily pay the $25 if this operates anywhere close to what dark sky was before the buyout. We’ve got some interesting weather on the horizon so this should be a good test.

Now they just need to offer an Apple Watch complication like this: https://imgur.com/oTG7MH6

Still bothers me that apple weather doesn’t offer this.

Re: Acme Weather

#127

Post by krelas »

danpalmer wrote: post #114

Did DarkSky ever make it out of the US? I know it was US only for a long time, as it seems this is. Even recently Apple Weather was hilariously bad in Australia. I was always asking my partner for the weather because her Pixel weather app was reasonably reliable and Apple Weather was always wrong. Weather forecasts are such a localised issue. I've never seen an app that does well globally.

Just get the BOM app, nothing else comes close for accurate weather here.

Re: Acme Weather

#128

Post by pixelatedindex »

malfist wrote: post #103
gcanyon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The team/person responsible for Woot sold it to Amazon, and then launched Meh the day their non-compete ended, along with a manifesto explaining how badly they thought Amazon had handled Woot.

Got a link to the manifesto? My kagi-fu isn't finding it

Speaking of subscriptions, how is the Kagi one working out for you? Is it worth the switch?

Re: Acme Weather

#129

Post by renewiltord »

$25/yr for accurate weather predictions is valuable but I don’t want app. I want api usage. Weather use for me is through Claw-type background agent that notifies me prior to events.

Re: Acme Weather

#130

Post by pzmarzly »

basicoperation wrote: post #5

The site doesn’t make it clear, but it’s not available worldwide. The App Store doesn’t tell you where exactly it is available, but it’s not in the UK. This surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.

From website's FAQ:

Acme is currently available in the United States (including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico) and Canada.

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