Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Any find the new weather app extremely inaccurate?
- Thread starter dj1891
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Different weather apps give different results, depending on the region you are. To find a good weather app, just test a few for a while to see which one gives the best results for you. As far as I know, there is no single weather app that gives the best predictions for every spot on earth.
For example, WeatherPro gives the best results for me in my region. And Accuweather is only so-so. But when I was traveling in Taiwan it was the other way round: Accuweather gave the best predictions in Taiwan and WeatherPro was mediocre.
For example, WeatherPro gives the best results for me in my region. And Accuweather is only so-so. But when I was traveling in Taiwan it was the other way round: Accuweather gave the best predictions in Taiwan and WeatherPro was mediocre.
Weather forecasts around the world have never been accurate. Even info at the moment might be totally wrong. They are only slightly better than a magic 8 ball.
For Germany. It shows dark cloudy weather. But outside it’s sunny and I don’t see any clouds.
I generally use the Met Office one in the UK but do have the stock one set up with the GPS turned off and four locations set, two of them set to have notifications about things. Generally the notifications are not a million miles off i find but thats all i really use it for unless i happen to be using a watch face that includes weather through the stock app.
It’s pure sh*t anywhere in the world outside of United States . I don’t understand why the did not let you to choose another data provider. Weather channel works only in us, where across Europe in Spain, Uk, Germany or Poland it shows pure sun when there’s a tornado and heavy rain going on ?
Try the Hello Weather app. It contains forecast info from 6 different weather sources. After a few days of trying the different sources I was able to determine which one seemed to be the most accurate for my location. Plus it has really solid privacy protections compared to most weather apps.
It is horrible. I am in Barcelona all week and it kept showing the rain icon in the weekly overview even though the chance of rain was like 40% for 1 hour in a day. You would think apple would show the overall icon (sun) instead of the chance of rain for 1 hour in a 24 hour day in the weekly overview.
It is hard to be wrong in a country that consists of 80% rain ?
It is hard to be wrong in a country that consists of 80% rain ?
Whilst the app has been updated it will only be as accurate as the data source and for the UK its still set to use The Weather Channel for its data like it has for a while now. You can make the app as funky as you like, look how you want, send notifications for whatever but it will only be as good as the data source.
The app here professes to be hyper-local (scrolling to the bottom of the forecast tells me its for my street) but its only so-so for accuracy, especially weather conditions. Other apps that also claim hyper-local seem to have a better time of it - maybe actually accessing local weather reporting stations. You'd think that with their purchase of Dark Sky, their tech would have become better on this front - maybe learned a few things.
In the meantime, I'm given to recall the old George Carlin character - the Hippy-Dippy Weather Man - who would report on the weather as forecast at the airport, and then say, "But who lives at the airport?"
In the meantime, I'm given to recall the old George Carlin character - the Hippy-Dippy Weather Man - who would report on the weather as forecast at the airport, and then say, "But who lives at the airport?"
Finding it to be very hit / miss. Not to mention the app and widget frequently disagree.
Like right this minute it tells me partly cloudy with 5 mile vis when it is actually heavy fog with maybe a block visibility.
An hour ago it was spot on.
Like right this minute it tells me partly cloudy with 5 mile vis when it is actually heavy fog with maybe a block visibility.
An hour ago it was spot on.
It’s true the widget doesn’t update often enough – no weather widget seems to, I’m sure for battery reasons. The widgets are really only useful at night, once the temp isn’t changing much!
Does the data in Apple weather coincide with the data in the Dark Sky app for you? The API hasn't changed nor has its data pool and processing of that data. Should note that the only Dark Sky data being used is the 60 minute precipitation forecast, everything else is the weather channel.
Dark Sky is just a system that uses more granular data to predict the weather more precisely on a per user basis. A rain forecast for your city could take an hour+ to reach you plus a lot can change from the time you listen to the weather and the predicted time. While its needs to be managed its a system that runs itself with little outside intervention which is why 5-10 employees could run the company for the last 10 years.
Its weather data is obtained from national weather services. It takes the radar data and cleans it up, removing things like flocks of birds and such from the radar data. Now with better knowledge of storm data like heading, speed and behavior combined with your precise location via your smartphones location services it can better predict when you will have rain. Finally what sets them apart was their initiative to take the radar data and make it into an easily readable graph/chart that is always displayed. This isn't anything you couldn't do yourself with a bit of education on the subject, it would just be a massive pita keep the data updated.
It was likely less expensive for Apple to buy Dark Sky then to supply it to all their users. Every update via their API would cost the developer using it .0001 USD. Now with widgets and watches this data is being refreshed A LOT.
Point is, for it to be less accurate now than it was before would mean its data isn't being handled somewhere and you are seeing a different areas forecast (guessing?). I've checked a couple spots in the UK (vague I know) and it was the same rain forecast data in the iOS native weather app as it was in the Dark Sky app and other apps on iOS and Android that use the Darksky API. While I can't really know the true weather conditions in those locations they all seem to to be using the same precip data as always.
EDIT : Darksky.net still has there weather data on their website to cross reference as well.
Last edited: