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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

#71

Post by guntherhermann »

alexander0042 wrote: post #53
jacurtis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, PirateWeather seems like a misbrand here. When I read it, i thought it was stealing weather data or something. On the web, the term "pirate" generally doesn't mean good things. This name almost implies that it is illegal or something. I'm imagining designing a software product around this and presenting it to a C-Level, explaining that we use "PirateWeather" and I think I'm going to get grilled with lots of…

I'm the dev for this, so can shed some light on this! Weather Underground was a pretty out there choice- I guess the kind of people who like putting together weather APIs aren't great at naming things. I considered "Bright Ground", and still have the domain name for it, so maybe it'd be worth spinning up another API endpoint/ branding that uses that and has a more commercial focus, keeping Pirate Weather as the free…

FWIW I love the name Pirate Weather. Thanks for the work!

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

#73

Post by hnarn »

earthscienceman wrote: post #67
alexander0042 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! It's the same underlying models, but three key differences: 1. Pirate Weather returns data following the Dark Sky syntax, as opposed to the custom NWS format. 2. Pirate Weather has global coverage, the NWS API is only for the US. 3. The NWS one uses human forecasters to come up with their forecasts, compared to Pirate Weather's use of raw model results.

Only on HN would the NWS format be described as 'custom'.

I know literally nothing about weather data standardization, but if the format was — for the sake of argument — unique to the US for example and another more popular format was used either internationally or de-facto by third parties, I’d say it qualifies as a “custom” format.

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

#74

Post by rootusrootus »

shagie wrote: post #26
nerdponx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume there's no recourse for iOS users?

If you are using the current version of iOS, the new weather app rocks in terms of functionality (IMHO better than the previous version of Dark Sky). If you are on an old version of iOS and mourn the loss of DarkSky app, I personally like MyRadar - it has some very nice features and I used in tandem with DarkSky in the past. If you are after writing an iOS app, you already have an Apple developer account allowing for…

iOS Weather is pretty nice. But I can't quite love it, because it frequently tells my wife and I different values for current temperature, all while proclaiming to be giving data for the same small city. I can manually program the city in and get it to do the same thing. Hard to trust it.

Also, it's almost always wrong with rain predictions. But so was Dark Sky, so that's fair.

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

#75

Post by counters »

earthscienceman wrote: post #62
counters wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Congress passed the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act back in 2017 which not only gave massive funding injection to model development activities, data procurement, and more, but also formalized the new next-generation community modeling initiatives which are focused on tackling the dominance of the EC models in the 2-5 day forecast space. The diagnosis of the problems of the American forecast model…

I disagree that my (extremely broad) diagnosis of the problems with forecasting in America is based on flawed premises. You've provided thorough, correct, and important details here but my comment was aimed at the broader HN audience, not on writing the central argument for a discussion on the historical timeline. I think what I said, "Horrible oversight by the federal govt (read, congress) of our technical/scientifi…

The thing about the computing is that it has impacted the culture surrounding NWP model development within the American modeling community. At ECMWF, there is capacity in the primary systems to support R&D, so the total cost to the community to maintain this capability is much lower than in the US where everything is fragmented. If there was greater capacity for researchers to run GFS on the limited number of systems with first-class (or any) support, it may have helped consolidate the community.

Totally acknowledge that there are other takes here. And I have a bit of skepticism about how much EPIC will really achieve and what it can do to resolve these issues. But I don't necessarily agree that the science at EC is 5-10 years ahead of the American community's. What's matriculated R2O is definitely a few years ahead, of us, especially for medium-range forecasting. But the US likely still maintains a competitive edge in mesoscale/rapid refresh forecasting, and even though we've lost key developers to the private sector recently, the NBM seems (in my admittedly limited experience) to perform favorably to similar products out of ECMWF or other European national weather services.

Your point about ECMWF being fundamentally structured with the singular goal of improving the forecast is super important - I 100% agree with that, and the US has yet to do much of anything to address this.

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

#76

Post by dv_dt »

rootusrootus wrote: post #74
shagie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using the current version of iOS, the new weather app rocks in terms of functionality (IMHO better than the previous version of Dark Sky). If you are on an old version of iOS and mourn the loss of DarkSky app, I personally like MyRadar - it has some very nice features and I used in tandem with DarkSky in the past. If you are after writing an iOS app, you already have an Apple developer account allowing for…

iOS Weather is pretty nice. But I can't quite love it, because it frequently tells my wife and I different values for current temperature, all while proclaiming to be giving data for the same small city. I can manually program the city in and get it to do the same thing. Hard to trust it. Also, it's almost always wrong with rain predictions. But so was Dark Sky, so that's fair.

Yup it’s pretty bad - I kept comparing it to the nws mobile site and the iOS weather app was frequently wrong vs the nws and real outcomes

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

#77

Post by vermilingua »

earthscienceman wrote: post #67
alexander0042 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! It's the same underlying models, but three key differences: 1. Pirate Weather returns data following the Dark Sky syntax, as opposed to the custom NWS format. 2. Pirate Weather has global coverage, the NWS API is only for the US. 3. The NWS one uses human forecasters to come up with their forecasts, compared to Pirate Weather's use of raw model results.

Only on HN would the NWS format be described as 'custom'.

Only in the US would you assume your govt's format is 'default'.

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

#78

Post by nivenkos »

alexander0042 wrote: post #53
jacurtis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, PirateWeather seems like a misbrand here. When I read it, i thought it was stealing weather data or something. On the web, the term "pirate" generally doesn't mean good things. This name almost implies that it is illegal or something. I'm imagining designing a software product around this and presenting it to a C-Level, explaining that we use "PirateWeather" and I think I'm going to get grilled with lots of…

I'm the dev for this, so can shed some light on this! Weather Underground was a pretty out there choice- I guess the kind of people who like putting together weather APIs aren't great at naming things. I considered "Bright Ground", and still have the domain name for it, so maybe it'd be worth spinning up another API endpoint/ branding that uses that and has a more commercial focus, keeping Pirate Weather as the free…

Weather Underground would be hilarious.

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

#79

Post by zerocrates »

nivenkos wrote: post #78
alexander0042 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the dev for this, so can shed some light on this! Weather Underground was a pretty out there choice- I guess the kind of people who like putting together weather APIs aren't great at naming things. I considered "Bright Ground", and still have the domain name for it, so maybe it'd be worth spinning up another API endpoint/ branding that uses that and has a more commercial focus, keeping Pirate Weather as the free…

Weather Underground would be hilarious.

Not only is it already a thing, IBM of all people own them now.

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

#80

Post by tjohns »

vermilingua wrote: post #77
earthscienceman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on HN would the NWS format be described as 'custom'.

Only in the US would you assume your govt's format is 'default'.

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.

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