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Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

pirateweather.net

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Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#11

Post by kxrm »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #3

> Why "PirateWeather"? I've always thought that the HRRR model was pronounced the same way as the classic pirate "ARRR". Also, there is one company out there that thinks APIs can be copyrighted, which might apply here. This answers the first question I had upon seeing the name, which was, is it free, open, documented and legal ? Based on the above the answer seems to be "probably". Very commendable effort, and I hope…

> is it free, open, documented and legal?

I think it says something that we live in a world where NOAA data could be seen as an underground or less than legal means of getting the weather.

Perhaps AccuWeather has been successful in their campaign to keep free weather data as obscure as possible.

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#12

Post by dzhiurgis »

pca2 wrote: post #7

Can confirm pirateweather.net's forecast API working as a drop-in replacement for DarkSky's. I was able to fix a soon to be broken DarkSky bitbar script by just replacing the URLs/API keys to pirateweather's in under 5 minutes.

> I was able to fix a soon to be broken DarkSky bitbar script

Please fork it for us lazy ones

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#13

Post by PraetorianGourd »

jron wrote: post #5

I was really hoping https://merrysky.net/ had a graphical forecast similar to weather underground's 10 day. I've yet to find anything else that quickly shows everything you'd want to know in a single image. Even the mouseover timeline is perfection. It is so good and seemingly exclusive to WU that I sometimes wonder if they hold a patent for it.

The _presentation_ is impressive, but the forecast is often the raw output from various models, and thus not entirely reliable. For example, I live in a valley where most forecast models smooth over giving more snow/cold than we ever get.

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#14

Post by chrisweekly »

jron wrote: post #5

I was really hoping https://merrysky.net/ had a graphical forecast similar to weather underground's 10 day. I've yet to find anything else that quickly shows everything you'd want to know in a single image. Even the mouseover timeline is perfection. It is so good and seemingly exclusive to WU that I sometimes wonder if they hold a patent for it.

Related tangent: Windy (iOS app) does a remarkably good job providing multiple data sources and terrific dataviz.

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#16

Post by billiam »

earthscienceman wrote: post #8

It's going to be a tangential comment but I work in science research that's adjacent to weather forecasting and I find the political/technical jockeying that is happening with forecasting to be fascinating. It's a nexus of capitalism, federal government spending, politics, and technology that has very real implications for individual Americans. In summary: horrible oversight by the federal govt (read, congress) of ou…

Have any nerdy Congresspeople wanted to solve this ridiculous inefficiency in recent years. Seems like a natural "the Europeans kick our ass at forecasting" message would go over well and potentially negate the lobbying from Weather Channel and others with a vested interest in perpetuating this stupid situation.

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#17

Post by aendruk »

nerdponx wrote: post #9
pca2 wrote: post #7

Can confirm pirateweather.net's forecast API working as a drop-in replacement for DarkSky's. I was able to fix a soon to be broken DarkSky bitbar script by just replacing the URLs/API keys to pirateweather's in under 5 minutes.

I assume there's no recourse for iOS users?

Do you run BitBar on iOS?

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#18

Post by davchana »

I usually use forecase.weather.gov They provide a nice textual weather page, with English, for next 7 or 8 days [1]. But it is tiring to open 3 or 4 bookmarks, so I thought to consume that as json & make a single page html app with ajax requests. Its still in progress, I spent few minutes yesterday. The surprising thing was (I was ready to fetch the html text & parse it, difficult), I simply changed one parameter to JSON & I got json [2]. I didn't find any easy to find documentation about json endpoint. My plan is to have city abbreviations on top in horizontal menu, then each click fetches json, puts it into div below.

1. https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.78&lon=-122...

2. https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.98&lon=-120...

Re: Pirate Weather: A free, open, and documented forecast API

#19

Post by jmbwell »

earthscienceman wrote: post #8

It's going to be a tangential comment but I work in science research that's adjacent to weather forecasting and I find the political/technical jockeying that is happening with forecasting to be fascinating. It's a nexus of capitalism, federal government spending, politics, and technology that has very real implications for individual Americans. In summary: horrible oversight by the federal govt (read, congress) of ou…

100%.

There is enormous data available at https://www.weather.gov/ at no charge, including hourly and weekly forecasts, spot forecasts, radar (multiple layers, with/without animation) and satellite (multiple layers, with/without animation), plus storm watches, hurricane info, historical data, climate data…

I guess it's nice that apps can do things like advise me that it might start raining in a few minutes, but often by the time I see those alerts, the water on my head has alerted me anyway.

All other weather apps, it seems to me, are for little more than tracking my location and serving me relevant ads.

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