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Apple Weather app

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ab2c4

macrumors 68000
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I can understand a little when it’s wrong when predicting weather as the weather can change drastically without notice. However, when it reports info after the fact that is so wrong it makes you wonder.

Last night the Apple weather app reported that we got 2.2 inches of snow yesterday at my location. I went out in the yard and measured. We got 9 inches of snow lol.
 
ab2c4 said:
I can understand a little when it’s wrong when predicting weather as the weather can change drastically without notice. However, when it reports info after the fact that is so wrong it makes you wonder.

Last night the Apple weather app reported that we got 2.2 inches of snow yesterday at my location. I went out in the yard and measured. We got 9 inches of snow lol.
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Snow depth can significantly vary across small areas. Most official snow depth locations are located at airports. Other storm depths can come from trined NWS observers/spotters, law enforcement, traffic cams and automated weather systems.

Snow depth is will always be an issue with any app. It will be more accurate the closer you are to one of the above items I mentioned.

And I would recommend getting a few apps and see which one is more accurate. Also make sure you are getting NWS severe weather notifications.
 
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Sometimes the app is predicting no rain for the whole day and when I look outside the window it is already raining since almost half an hour until the app changes to rain. Same for snow. There hasn't been any snow predicted for the next day and when I wake up after sleeping it has snowed.

It's also the other way round. There is a prediction of snow or rain on the current day and the next one and a few hours later it's gone. It's even worse with rain predictions, on a day where the percentage for rain was 100% it suddenly just disappeared on that same day.

I don't use location service but this doesn't matter if I put in the correct location myself. I can see what measuring station is used and it's very very near, also the next one what normally doesn't even differ, just sometimes a tiny bit.


They also always make the summers hotter as they are with heat warnings when it's just 2-3 warm days what I won't even would consider summer and I really don't like heat.
Also "highest temperature ever records" are much lower when I measure myself with two very different thermometers and are no records at all. There is a summer with a few hot weeks in a row every few years and always had been. It happend even more often in the past and there had not been any warnings. The last two summers here felt like no summer at all.

But other apps or websites are not better, at least they show the rain when it's already raining. But I can see it with my own eyes anyway and don't need an app for that.

I don't know when it started but I know that at least until 2010 I could rely on the forecast. I they said the day before it's starting to rain or snow the next afternoon for example it happend and they might be only wrong by an hour.
 
I don't rely on the app as 'definitive' in any way, shape or form, but its current setting of switching from temperature / brief graphic of conditions and low/high to that of the entire widget showing me its raining / snowing / windy outside with no other info is not helpful. I mean, I can see those conditions...(whether or not its right).
 
FWIW, the Pixel Weather app was very wrong about the snowstorms this past two weeks and got ridiculed in several news articles.

Always use more than one source. And always expect them to still be wrong unless you live right next to an airport.
 
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So people in the USA are now experiencing what the rest of the world has been putting up with since the very beginning of the Weather app? If you live outside the USA you just expect that it'll be laughably inaccurate.

For some reason Apple doesn't directly integrate observation data from countries' meteorological agencies (except for a few features like severe weather alerts and the radar data to do next-hour precipitation). Everything else is aggregated from third-party services that are demonstrably wrong a high proportion of the time.
 
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I'm UK based and have got a few weather apps installed from Met Office, BBC Weather and the Norwegian one FR....at any time they can all have different info showing as they all have different sources and come up with different predictions most of the time especially a few days out.
 
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ab2c4 said:
Last night the Apple weather app reported that we got 2.2 inches of snow yesterday at my location. I went out in the yard and measured. We got 9 inches of snow lol.
Click to expand...
The app is not at fault, nothing can predict the weather on your doorstep. If you had measured a few feet away it would have measured 4 or 11 inches. All the app can do is track current weather patterns for your area. There is no such thing as weather prediction anymore, the atmosphere is so unstable now that no "prediction" is accurate more than 36 hours out.
 
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The past few weeks have had 2 significant storms for the east coast that were complete anomalies in how difficult they were to predict. It's completely unreal that we had 2 of them in like a 10 day span.

I love following the weather and have about 5 weather apps on my phone. The only one that I never touch and absolutely hate is the apple weather app. IMHO, it's the worst app that Apple has. I do like the look of their radar, but that's it.
 
I find Apple Weather in Canada is quite inaccurate. But when I was on vacation in Mexico last month, it was super accurate and had better forecasts than the app I usually use.
 
Diopter said:
So people in the USA are now experiencing what the rest of the world has been putting up with since the very beginning of the Weather app? If you live outside the USA you just expect that it'll be laughably inaccurate.

For some reason Apple doesn't directly integrate observation data from countries' meteorological agencies (except for a few features like severe weather alerts and the radar data to do next-hour precipitation). Everything else is aggregated from third-party services that are demonstrably wrong a high proportion of the time.
Click to expand...

It's current weather reports are not even matching the NWS for the same city.

They bought Dark Sky several years ago I am guessing to save money on data licensing fees but maybe they should get out of the weather business and leave it to the experts.
 
Nada Ting said:
There is no such thing as weather prediction anymore, the atmosphere is so unstable now that no "prediction" is accurate more than 36 hours out.
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Over the last 5 years the U.S. has put a half dozen or so new satellites into service with the newest advanced gear to monitor and provide the most accurate weather monitoring and forecasts ever.

Forecasts have never been more accurate than they are today, regardless of the atmosphere.
 
Apple uses NOAA data with other sources to fill in the gaps. This is as accurate as reasonably possible here in the US. This does not mean it's always right.

Make sure Weather.app has location data turned on and if you are satisfied turned on Precise Location.

Weather conditions can vary significantly across a zip code. In the US the weather grid is a higher resolution than zip codes but your exact location will be need to leverage the data. If not it will be averaged.
 
cynics said:
Apple uses NOAA data with other sources to fill in the gaps. This is as accurate as reasonably possible here in the US. This does not mean it's always right.

Make sure Weather.app has location data turned on and if you are satisfied turned on Precise Location.
Click to expand...

Are you sure they are reporting the data unaltered from NOAA/etc? These past few weeks of polar vortex, I've seen temperatures on my iPhone differ from weather.gov by 11 deg F. I use fixed city locations rather than my location to avoid that potential for inconsistency.

From what I can tell Apple's recent weather app/widgets source data from Dark Sky, which they bought, and Dark Sky does it's own processing of data sources. Fine but shouldn't it match NOAA weather stations (available through weather.gov) for the same location's current conditions?

As far as forecasts go, I've found TWC (which I believe the Apple apps/widgets used on older OS and available as weather.com) to predict the highs/lows of these polar vortex days better. TWC's predictions are generally rated more accurate than Apple's as well.

I don't really care about 1 or 2 degress but 10 degrees changes how many layers I bring with me.
 
The apple weather app sucks, in Asia it will say it's going to rain all day and it's sunny and 82 or more outside.. the only time what's really right is the weather radar and the Typhoon that was passing over. I learn to take it with a grain of salt when not in the US.
 
Sometimes in Asia it will show the whole week of just rain when it's sunny out, I don't know where the weather data is coming from but it's to the point I'm looking for something a bit better than the apple weather app.
 
cynics said:
Apple uses NOAA data with other sources to fill in the gaps. This is as accurate as reasonably possible here in the US. This does not mean it's always right.

Make sure Weather.app has location data turned on and if you are satisfied turned on Precise Location.

Weather conditions can vary significantly across a zip code. In the US the weather grid is a higher resolution than zip codes but your exact location will be need to leverage the data. If not it will be averaged.
Click to expand...

Apple Weather and NOAA, here in Midwest at least, are often VERY different.
 
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I found this site recommended when talking about the Pixel Weather app issues. Put in your city and it will tell you which site is usually the most accurate for your area. Unlike Apple's Weather app, Carrot Weather will let you change your data source. Just make sure to pick the right one.

www.forecastadvisor.com

ForecastAdvisor — Which Weather Forecaster Is Most Accurate?

Find out which weather forecaster is most accurate for your city. ForecastAdvisor compares forecast accuracy across 2,200+ locations worldwide.
www.forecastadvisor.com www.forecastadvisor.com
 
The creators of Dark Sky (who apple bought to integrate their radar into apple weather), have just released a new app called Acme Weather.

apps.apple.com

Acme Weather App - App Store

Download Acme Weather by Acme Weather on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Acme Weather.
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com
 
ayephoner said:
The creators of Dark Sky (who apple bought to integrate their radar into apple weather), have just released a new app called Acme Weather.

apps.apple.com

Acme Weather App - App Store

Download Acme Weather by Acme Weather on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Acme Weather.
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com
Click to expand...
With a $25 pay wall before you can see anything. Not going to waste time buying and canceling an app that does that.
 
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