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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

#141

Post by Humphrey »

ace2358 wrote: post #108
Humphrey wrote: post #106

As an Australian, my main issue with almost all Weather API's and services is that the data is almost always sub-par to the weather data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). It would be great if there was a backend provider concept, so that I could tell my devices (such as an iPhone) to only use BOM data for it's inbuilt widgets.

It’s truly maddening as an Aussie. How many apps just ignore the BoM? I expected the Apple one not to, but it does. It’s frustrating when friends visit me and check the weather on their phone and the data for the Google and Apple apps is so bad. I use Willy weather that uses bom. I don’t love it though. Any recommendations? I personally can’t stand the actual BoM app as an iPhone user but I appreciate that they tried…

> Any recommendations? I personally can’t stand the actual BoM app as an iPhone user but I appreciate that they tried…

Have you tried the official iOS BOM app in the past few weeks? I recently switched to it from Willy Weather as it has improved a lot. It's display of the next 90mins of modelled rain radar is the Official App's killer feature for me.

Last week it enabled me to drive 40mins to some mountain bike tracks, knowing rain models showed that the massive storm would have just passed by the time I'd get there.

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

#142

Post by Humphrey »

thejosh wrote: post #138
zinekeller wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be surprised that the free-for-all-no-questions-asked US system is not the one followed around the world. Australia, like other countries with significant British history, has the concept of Crown Copyrights ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#Australia ). Whether it's the (UK) Met Office ( https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/data/met-office-data-f... ), (Australian) BoM ( https://reg.bom.gov.au/…

That being said, and I agree with all points you raised, the Australian Gov has been fantastic over the last few years of focusing on open data, to give credit where it's due. https://data.gov.au/search Their datasets are great! G-NAF for example: https://data.gov.au/dataset/ds-dga-19432f89-dc3a-4ef3-b943-5...

Totally, there are full 3d scans of Launceston available. It's amazing what data you can access!

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

#144

Post by Humphrey »

sandos wrote: post #112
ace2358 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s truly maddening as an Aussie. How many apps just ignore the BoM? I expected the Apple one not to, but it does. It’s frustrating when friends visit me and check the weather on their phone and the data for the Google and Apple apps is so bad. I use Willy weather that uses bom. I don’t love it though. Any recommendations? I personally can’t stand the actual BoM app as an iPhone user but I appreciate that they tried…

I wonder if this isn't the same all over? In Sweden we also have a local metrology bureu which produces much better forecasts than most others. As I understand it they basically tweak the global models with .. sort of local "knowledge". And there are many such models, a few EU-specific and, I assume, one local for most countries.

About 10 years ago, I dropped into our local meteorology office on my lunch break to ask about the weather for a week long bush walk I had planned. It was amazing too see how much local knowledge the guy there could apply to the official BOM forecasts to make them more meaningful! Models are great, and have improved significantly since then, but human experience is also amazing!

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

#145

Post by Humphrey »

incompatible wrote: post #120
ace2358 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s truly maddening as an Aussie. How many apps just ignore the BoM? I expected the Apple one not to, but it does. It’s frustrating when friends visit me and check the weather on their phone and the data for the Google and Apple apps is so bad. I use Willy weather that uses bom. I don’t love it though. Any recommendations? I personally can’t stand the actual BoM app as an iPhone user but I appreciate that they tried…

I just bookmark the BOM forecast web page for my location. Does an app give anything better?

The latest version of the official app has 90mins of future "modeled" rain radar. I couldn't find that quickly on the website.

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

#147

Post by nomilk »

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.

Thanks to your comment, I also updated an app that had stopped working since DarkSky shutdown, and also had it going in 5 minutes.

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

#148

Post by jftuga »

alexander0042 wrote: post #136
aequitas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lambda functions will just be running your business logic code. Only specific part Lambda provides is the glue. Which is easy to replace with any other cloud or self hosted alternative.

The the end of the day, the real reason I went with Lambda to build this is that when I started, I didn't know anything about spinning up a server, building a storage array, or serving an web request. But what I did know was how to write a Python script to extract weather data from a file. The really cool thing about some of these cloud tools is that they let me ignore all of those (very difficult) problems and just…

Where is your lamda_handler defined? I searched your repos but could not find it.

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

#149

Post by seb1204 »

earthscienceman wrote: post #96
tjohns wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implication was more that any government meteorological office's format is the default over a small private company. Especially since this API is repackaging output from the NWS's GFS model output.

Yeah. And the follow up snark comment about it being an American thing. It is literally the file format specified for this type of data, globally. As outlined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) decades ago. It's widely supported and parseable. Making a web API that parses GRIB data is trivial. It's not some esoteric thing. You can open the files in python on any modern computer+OS.

So what is different or better in the Dark Sky syntax?

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

#150

Post by Sightline »

jmbwell wrote: post #19
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…

The most accurate and concise weather forecasts come from weather.gov, blows my mind that people don't know this.
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