[HN Gopher] A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpi...
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A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece (2023)
Author : skadamat
Score : 289 points
Date : 2024-07-30 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nightingaledvs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nightingaledvs.com)
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Dark Sky was their lesser product. Their "lines" interface at
| forecast.io/lines before they rebranded was peak weather UI, but
| the internet has almost no record of it ever existing.
| LordKeren wrote:
| The dark sky API was the backbone of several tinkering projects
| that I built when first getting in to coding. Fond memories and
| many thanks to the dark sky devs
| i80and wrote:
| Dark Sky was genuinely the most irreplaceable app I've ever used.
| I don't think I'll ever forgive Apple's butchering it for spare
| parts.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Have you used the latest Weather app? Which DarkSky features is
| it missing?
| flkiwi wrote:
| The unmatched clarity and simplicity of the data. The Weather
| app isn't in the same league. To my eye, it's a cluttered,
| gaudy mess, certainly compared to Dark Sky.
|
| Carrot Weather has a mode that is almost a replacement for
| Dark Sky, btw, though the location-based alerts have gotten
| less and less reliable over the years (which I am completely
| unable to understand).
| chatmasta wrote:
| The blog post does a good job of enumerating the nice
| interfaces in Dark Sky. But it spends no time comparing
| them to the equivalents in Weather app. If it did, then the
| parity of features would become clear, not only in terms of
| information presented but also user interface.
|
| Also, FWIW this post is from 2023, and the Weather app has
| improved significantly since then.
|
| For example, the post references a Reddit comment
| complaining about the lack of a precipitation map:
|
| > there anything that has the precipitation graph similar
| to dark sky
|
| This is available in Weather app. You can see the hourly
| graph, and you can also see the map with precipitation
| overlay.
|
| The notification feature you ask for is also supported.
|
| I repeat my original question: can anyone actually name a
| feature from DarkSky that isn't present in the _current_
| Weather app?
| flkiwi wrote:
| It is cluttered and messy. Or, if you prefer, it does not
| have the _feature_ of thoughtful information design that
| was a primary factor in Dark Sky 's success, in favor of
| cartoonish and distracting animations and cluttered
| layout. The presence of information or functionality is
| not the only factor in success. (If it were, the Diamond
| Rio would be more iconic than the iPod, because it could
| arguably do more, though sometimes with less capacity
| given the timing.)
| fivestones wrote:
| I remember darksky used to seed me notifications that
| were something like "Rain in your location starting in 2
| minutes." You could almost set a timer based on it. 2
| minutes later it would be raining. It was super helpful
| when doing things outside with the family. If the current
| weather app can do this, I don't know how.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Click the settings hamburger (a universally recognized
| icon on iOS, and one of only two buttons on the main page
| of the Weather app). Then there is a prominent banner
| that says "Stay Informed: Get notifications for severe
| weather, rain or snow near you." Once you enable this,
| you can then configure the alerts to include severe
| weather, or simply rain in the next hour.
| mh- wrote:
| For anyone else struggling to find it with these
| instructions: I had to choose a location (I have a few
| added), then scroll all the way to the bottom (past
| averages, past "Report an Issue") and there's an easily-
| overlooked _" Manage Notifications"_ button.
|
| I had turned mine off, probably from way back when I used
| Dark Sky and didn't want redundant notifications.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Weird, for me it's in the corner in a sticky footer. I'm
| on iOS 17.6 and iPhone 15 Pro.
| mh- wrote:
| Just realized there's an iOS update - it hadn't notified
| me yet. I'm on an iPhone 14, but still running 17.5.1 for
| the next few minutes..
| shagie wrote:
| From Weather app and MyRadar last night -
| https://imgur.com/a/EnEXCGD
| metabagel wrote:
| The Apple Weather app is unreliable.
| flkiwi wrote:
| In fairness to Apple Weather, hyperlocal forecasts have
| inexplicably gotten far, far worse in the last few years
| (in my own anecdata anyway).
| metabagel wrote:
| It feels like quite the coincidence that hyperlocal
| weather prediction got worse after Dark Sky went away.
|
| But, I don't have any domain knowledge in this area.
| Perhaps, it is just more difficult due to climate change
| or other factors.
| macintux wrote:
| I've suspected, without any knowledge/evidence, that the
| increasing energy in the atmosphere has made all
| forecasts harder in recent years.
| Oakwhisper wrote:
| I did notice that Dark Sky's hyperlocal weather was
| getting bad in my area at the end. I wonder if it has
| anything to do with 5G frequency rollouts. I had seen
| some warnings about accurate weather predictions could be
| affected by it, but a quick search isn't showing any
| "Turns out 5G is/is not messing with our weather
| satellites" follow-up articles
| shagie wrote:
| Hyperlocal forecasts are an aggregate of other weather
| sources and radar.
|
| Things like the funding of NOAA or reallocation of funds
| within it can impact NOAA's ability to provide the data
| that is used to drive this (and other) weather and
| climate decisions.
| https://www.federaltimes.com/opinions/2024/04/30/noaas-
| budge...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Interestingly, COVID played a big roll in that.
| Commercial aircraft often report back weather conditions.
| During COVID, the reduction in commercial air traffic
| drastically reduced air borne information collection. It
| just hasn't seemed to return to its prior quality after
| that.
|
| I personally find, I've had to learn how to read a
| weather map to get a good understanding of forecasts
| chatmasta wrote:
| > Commercial aircraft often report back weather
| conditions
|
| Is this done via some automated system, or do pilots
| report it manually?
|
| I'd be curious to read more about this - do weather
| companies have partnerships with airlines where they pay
| them to carry sensors?
| whyenot wrote:
| > I repeat my original question: can anyone actually name
| a feature from DarkSky that isn't present in the current
| Weather app?
|
| As others have already mentioned, the fact that it
| displayed weather information in a clear and uncluttered
| way, and had a simple user interface. Apple Weather is a
| gaudy mess.
| Oakwhisper wrote:
| Weather history/future. Currently you can look 1 day in
| the past in Apple Weather. Dark Sky allowed you to look
| years into the past. Dark Sky also allowed you to look
| more than 10/14 days into the future. It used historical
| averages to show you for a specific day instead of some
| fancy prediction, but it was nice to have.
|
| There was also a "Check out Cool Storms" feature that let
| you see the weather map for an interesting storm that was
| happening at the moment.
|
| Notifications were also more configurable. You could set
| it to notify you if the precipitation chance were higher
| than a certain percentage or if the high were below or
| above a certain temp.
| boringg wrote:
| I agree with you in that no other app has comparable data
| to the weather data that Dark Sky had and the layout was
| amazing. Yes someones comment that the weather app has more
| features but its the quality of the features that are
| missing.
|
| I sometimes think that the reason Dark Sky was so good is
| that it spent a lot of money on the data side of things and
| probably refreshed their data and models much more than a
| larger company would. They were probably burning their
| money quite fast. As a function of the acquisition Apple
| tried to reduce the spend on data/processing while keeping
| the functions (it didn't succeed). Weather app has the same
| problem.
|
| All in all - seems like a well traveled road: nimble
| company trying to acquire new customers/market has better
| features until large companies take over and drive
| profit/revenue - diluting quality and pushing away
| customers. (different incentives)
| flkiwi wrote:
| I feel like people obsess over Dark Sky because it would
| have slotted almost unchanged into some hypothetical
| post-Mac OS 9 design language if "lickable" OS X had
| never existed. Or, if you prefer, Dark Sky embodied the
| engineered simplicity and power that made people so loyal
| to the earliest Apple GUI software in favor of the more,
| uh, ebullient character that has driven the last 20 years
| of Apple UI design (sic). Note that I still put Apple's
| UI design well ahead of both Android and Microsoft, but
| it has regressed substantially.
| walls wrote:
| There's a link at the top of this comment section that goes
| over it.
| chatmasta wrote:
| That's a link to a discussion from March 2023. My question
| is about which features are missing from the latest Weather
| app, after more than a year of improvement.
| boringg wrote:
| Weather app is not accurate and its slow.
|
| The features may be there but they aren't well
| implemented.
|
| Diluted for the masses.
| joeconway wrote:
| % cloud cover by hour
| chatmasta wrote:
| You're right, this one is missing. Although I'm skeptical
| of the utility (and accuracy) of something as precise as
| "percentage of cloud cover," compared to what _is_
| available in the app, namely "clear, cloudy, mostly sunny,
| etc."
|
| Is there a meaningful difference between 25% cloud cover
| and 35%? Or is it better to just give names to the
| "conditions" at buckets of 25%, 50%, 75%, etc?
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| I would expect certain segments of aviation to find the
| additional granularity critical.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Presumably they shouldn't be using a consumer weather
| service and mobile app.
| joeconway wrote:
| in my experience its more like: 0-5% - Sunny; 5-60% -
| Partly Cloudy; 60-100% - Cloudy;
|
| I've not seen other descriptors, and to view it changing
| over time its just on the timeline as a sun, sun+cloud &
| cloud emoji's
|
| It's not useful other than as a binary 'is it cloudy'
| which in Bay Area weather it is a meaningful difference
| between 30% and 60% coverage
| shagie wrote:
| The best cloud cover that I've found is yr.no
|
| For example (and it always takes a bit for me to find it)
| https://www.yr.no/en/details/table/2-4887398/United%20Sta
| tes... (and https://www.yr.no/en/details/graph/2-4887398/
| United%20States... )
|
| And here's their API - https://developer.yr.no/featured-
| products/forecast/
|
| It breaks it down by overall, low, medium, and high
| clouds.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| At the fringes, there is a meaningful difference. The
| center 50%, not really.
|
| A 95% coverage day is a bit different than a 100%
| coverage day. Particularly, when it comes to rain and
| wind expectations.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| How is that difference meaningful? What actions are you
| going to take differently at 95% cloud coverage vs 100%?
| I can't think of anything I'd do differently if I was
| expecting 100% cloud coverage tomorrow to wake up and
| find that it was actually at 95%.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah, and I'd argue that if the difference is meaningful
| to you, then you probably want something more accurate
| than what a consumer-grade weather service can provide.
| So it would be borderline irresponsible of Apple to even
| give you the false confidence of some precise measurement
| of cloud cover.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| With DarkSky, you used to be able to report current weather
| conditions. Augmenting weather modeling from sensors with
| real-time reports from users is critical for high levels of
| accuracy. Somehow this seems to have been completely
| overlooked in the integration with Apple's weather app.
| chatmasta wrote:
| You can do this in the Weather app. Click "report an issue"
| and it asks you to report current conditions in your area.
|
| Admittedly this information is not surfaced in any way like
| "other users say it's raining." And "report an issue" isn't
| a great name. But it does say they incorporate user reports
| into their data.
| writeslowly wrote:
| If I wanted to see the heat index at 3PM in Dark Sky, I could
| just tap the "feels like" button under the hourly forecast
| (pictured further down in the linked blog post) and look at
| what it says at 3PM.
|
| I just tried in Apple Weather, and the process was:
|
| 1. Tap on the hourly forecast, or the day, to go into the
| graph screen
|
| 2. Tap on the dropdown icon
|
| 3. Tap "feels like"
|
| 4. Either drag your finger along the graph until the time
| indicator at the top indicates you're close to 3PM, then read
| the temperature, or you can try to read it directly off the
| graph, but the axes aren't labeled clearly enough to make
| this feasible
| jachee wrote:
| Why would you need degree-perfect precision in a subjective
| measurement? Eyeball it. It'll feel like around 90ish. Or
| it'll feel like around 85ish. There's no reason for an
| indication that it'll feel 87.500.
| dwaite wrote:
| You only need to cross-navigate detail views (via the drop-
| down) if you start by looking at some other piece of
| information.
|
| 1. Scroll to the "Feels Like" tile
|
| 2. Tap it
| boringg wrote:
| Weather app is no where near as accurate and its slow
| (especially on any radar work). The features may be there but
| they aren't well implemented.
| jghn wrote:
| The biggest thing I find Weather to be missing is hyperlocal
| & timely accuracy.
|
| While I understand the UI complaints others have, for the
| handful of things I normally want to see I find Weather fine
| enough vs Dark Sky. BUT, the accuracy took a noticeable
| downward trend.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Assuming this is true, why did it happen? Presumably Apple
| is using the same data feeds and backend as Dark Sky? Or
| are they missing something?
| jghn wrote:
| I don't think that's a safe assumption. The effect was
| immediate and noticeable. I've seen other posts in this
| thread after I said this that suggested this was a cost
| savings measure.
| metabagel wrote:
| From using the Apple Weather app, I didn't get the
| feeling that Apple Weather actually adopted much of the
| guts of Dark Sky, even though Apple promised to do so.
| dwaite wrote:
| Weather has hyperlocal precipitation alerts.
|
| I don't believe Weather or Dark Sky have had hyperlocal
| weather forecasting. I would absolutely love such a feature
| (since I live far from the center of town in an area with
| microclimates); I would say both were equivalently faulty
| on my weather forecasts.
| metabagel wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be nearly as accurate. I've abandoned the
| Apple Weather app in favor of The Weather Channel App,
| because the former seemed unreliable to me.
| jefb wrote:
| The feature where it tells me the weather.
|
| I'd say there's about a 80% chance that it loads the forecast
| in under 5 seconds.
|
| Loading the radar has far worse performance - it only works
| ~50% of the time and failures just show an empty map forever.
|
| When it does manage to load the weather I've found the
| accuracy to be hot garbage.
| whyenot wrote:
| It's crap. No offense intended if you are on the team
| maintaining Apple Weather, but the interface is much more
| busy than DarkSky was and there is a lot less clarity and
| simplicity in how weather information is displayed. My
| impression is that the quality of the forecasts is also not
| as good, but that might just be my personal bias.
|
| The fact that Apple chose to shut down one of the best apps
| on the iPhone in order to promote Apple Weather is still
| really irritating. I keep Darksky in the app graveyard on my
| phone, next to Apollo.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The first year of the new weather app they didn't even give you
| hourly precipitation chance throughout the day. If I had to
| pick what were the two key features of Dark Sky it would be 1)
| impending rain notifications, and 2) hourly precipitation
| chances.
|
| It's included now, but still not as well as Dark Sky did it.
|
| For an app not trying to reproduce Dark Sky, but doing a nice
| job with an overview of the day's weather, I've been using
| Overlook. But now I'm seeing that its app store listing is
| gone. https://apps.apple.com/app/overlook-weather/id1639571738
| user3939382 wrote:
| I've been using Carrot. Okay but also not as good.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Plus a very expensive (relatively) subscription. I loved
| Dark Sky because I bought it and then I had it.
| krger wrote:
| >Plus a very expensive (relatively) subscription. I loved
| Dark Sky because I bought it and then I had it.
|
| Ongoing customer value (hyper-local precipitation
| forecasts) that has ongoing costs for the developer
| (weather data) is unsustainable without ongoing revenue
| (subscriptions). This may have had a thing or two to do
| with Dark Sky ending in an acquihire.
| shagie wrote:
| I'm fond of MyRadar. https://myradar.com
|
| While the radar view is nice, the outlook view is very
| nice.
|
| From a screen shot of the screen shot in the App Store:
| https://imgur.com/a/U8o1DJw and my own outlook
|
| The 'ring' data view at the top (and bottom of the second
| image) is a nice way to represent the data in a limited
| amount of space (phone / watch widgets).
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I do hate this about so many weather apps:
|
| > _Data Used to Track You_
|
| > _The following data may be used to track you across
| apps and websites owned by other companies:_
|
| > _Location_
|
| > _Identifiers_
|
| > _Usage Data_
| withzombies wrote:
| Carrot added a linear forecast view, which is very close to
| the Dark Sky interface and it's been great.
| caseyohara wrote:
| > linear forecast view
|
| Which view do you mean? I was a longtime Dark Sky user,
| and now I switch between Carrot and Apple Weather.
| robgibbons wrote:
| As an Android user who had a Dark Sky subscription, I have a
| similar sentiment.
| kernal wrote:
| Today Weather has precipitation alters and its UI is, IMO,
| better than that of Dark Sky. If you're looking for a free
| app there is also Weawow. Both allow the use of Apple's
| weather data.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| To put it gently, Apple destroyed a fantastically valuable
| piece of software and made my life worse. Since then, Apple has
| failed to come close to offering in their weather app what
| DarkSky offered for years prior.
|
| Besides the API, besides the hyper-local (and, in my
| experience, _always_ accurate) forecasts, besides the excellent
| visualizations, besides the nice web app, what I miss most was
| the history.
|
| I loved the history. It was perhaps DarkSky's least appreciated
| feature.
|
| You could search (at least within the US) for any date in the
| past few decades, and find the temperature and precipitation
| and whatnot for a given location.
|
| You could see what the weather was like on those important
| dates in your life. You could see what the weather was like the
| day _after_ those important dates in your life.
|
| It's a little bit of memory that's been excised from the
| commons. It still makes me sad.
| deveac wrote:
| As a motorcycle rider and someone who goes top-down in my
| Jeep all summer, the real-time incoming rain alerts of DS
| were freakishly accurate and I leaned on them constantly.
| Apple integrated the feature and they became comically
| inaccurate. (The opposite of an accurate rain forecast is not
| great.) After getting soaked one too many times, I finally
| got frustrated enough to chase down the best replacement.
| Don't love Carrot Weather near as much, but it is the best
| alternative I've found for heads up on incoming
| precipitation. Sigh. I still remember the days of getting a
| "moderate rain starting in 13 minutes" alert and hoping on
| the bike and zipping home in time. Don't know how they did it
| so well.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This was almost my experience exactly. I used DarkSky as a
| grad student with a twenty minute bike commute and
| responsibilities all over a large campus. Without fail,
| DarkSky kept me dry. (Or, at least allowed me to avoid the
| worst of it.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple integrated the feature and they became comically
| inaccurate_
|
| Any clue why? Did broadening the pool of reporting devices
| from Dark Sky users to the general iPhone population
| somehow break their models?
| lynndotpy wrote:
| It limited it-- DarkSky was on Android and iOS before
| Apple killed the service.
|
| But IIRC, DarkSky stopped using phones altogether some
| time before Apple killed the service. I can't find a
| source on that given Apple also deleted DarkSky's blog,
| so, grain of salt.
| macintux wrote:
| As a fellow naked-Jeep-fan, I've been perplexed and
| depressed by Apple's handling of it. A couple of weeks ago,
| we had a thunderstorm roll through, which dropped the local
| temperature by ~15 degrees F, but my Apple devices kept
| insisting the current weather was 90o. Maddening.
| ProxCoques wrote:
| Yes! The history! Why such an obviously useful feature isn't
| in all weather apps, I shall never know. Along with the usage
| you mention, I was always wanting to know at least what the
| temperature was yesterday so that I could work out what to
| wear or do today.
|
| I'd go as far to say that the absence of past weather data in
| most weather apps is symbolic of the wider state of design
| today. Anyone with any real design knowledge, any basic
| capacity to synthesize argument or think about problems,
| would find it obvious that showing past weather is useful
| because it provides _context_. So many statistical apps (so-
| called "dashboards") are such drek because of this too.
| fundad wrote:
| It's unlikely there were enough paying customers to pay the
| bills, especially compute; and Dark Sky willingly exited.
| wsatb wrote:
| Something changed before Apple even bought it. It was not
| nearly as accurate by the time Apple bought it. I do still miss
| the app, but the data or the algorithm changed before the
| purchase.
| mekal wrote:
| i noticed the same exact thing. i thought weather had been
| solved with dark sky. then at some point something got messed
| up. i would love to know the full story behind this.
| al_borland wrote:
| Same. If Apple had any sense they would have just slapped an
| Apple logo on Dark Sky and called it the new weather app, then
| used it to influence their core design language throughout the
| rest of the OS.
|
| I'm using the weather app now, but am still longing for the
| spiritual successor to Dark Sky.
|
| I had a similar feeling when Google bought and killed Sparrow.
| They should have simply replaced the Gmail app with Sparrow,
| instead, they killed the only email client I ever genuinely
| enjoyed using.
| soheil wrote:
| Honestly, thinking that Apple will ever give a damn about
| individual apps is like expectin a cat to learn calculus.
| mekal wrote:
| this...every time i use the damn apple weather app i am
| reminded how much i miss dark sky and my contempt is rekindled.
| makes me wonder how often this sort of tragedy happens.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| 100000%
|
| No excuse to not just buy Dark Sky and let them continue
| unburdened by corporate politics
| lagniappe wrote:
| I used to use darksky a lot, because it reminded me of Back To
| The Future 2 when it'd do the "done raining in 5 mins". It's a
| stupid request, but if other services could figure this out along
| with a cute UI like darksky, I'd be your best friend. Weather
| sites can have the best info, but if the UI is not good then its
| much harder to draw conclusions from the stats.
| starmftronajoll wrote:
| After the shutdown of Dark Sky, I switched to Carrot, which added
| a layout that mimics Dark Sky's design (the layout option is
| called "Anubis" in the Carrot app). I've found it to be a largely
| seamless replacement.
| flkiwi wrote:
| Agree, though there's still something about Carrot's underlying
| design language that is less subtle and refined. It's a very,
| _very_ minor complaint given the effort Carrot clearly made
| (and their evident appreciation for a competitor that did
| things better for many users ' preferences), but there's some
| weird information processing lag I still experience with Carrot
| because I'm fighting the UI even though it looks almost
| identical to DS. In the end, I actually enjoy the experience
| because (a) it's so minor and (b) it gives me an opportunity to
| play with how my own brain perceives the universe. So that's
| fun.
| trts wrote:
| I actually feel Apple did a decent job gobbling it up and
| incorporating some of the best features into their native weather
| app.
|
| Merry Sky is a good homage but I've never evaluated it much for
| accuracy: https://merrysky.net/forecast/new%20york/us
| culi wrote:
| I agree. I couldn't find anything in the OP post that the Apple
| weather app doesn't currently do and, imo, do in a much more
| refined way
| metabagel wrote:
| I became exasperated with the unreliability of the Apple
| Weather app. It gave embarrassingly wrong predictions on a
| frequent basis. Dark Sky was amazing. I resent Apple for
| killing that very accurate and useful app.
| bradboimler wrote:
| It screwed Android users over though, no?
| metabagel wrote:
| I think the most important feature is accuracy. Maybe, Apple
| Weather is more accurate for other regions, but by my
| observation it is absolutely not accurate in regards to
| predicting rain where I live in Southern California. And we
| don't even get that much rain.
| mh- wrote:
| It's completely inaccurate with regards to "is it raining
| right _now_ " in San Diego County. Given that, it's
| predictions are beyond useless.
|
| I didn't live here when Dark Sky was still good, but Dark Sky
| was incredibly accurate when I lived in the Bay Area.
| counters wrote:
| > I didn't live here when Dark Sky was still good, but Dark
| Sky was incredibly accurate when I lived in the Bay Area.
|
| I'm kind of skeptical about that, given that the Bay Area
| has relatively poor radar coverage. The local NEXRAD site
| is near Mt Umunhum south of San Jose and is quite elevated,
| so the lowest scanning tilt has limited coverage below
| ~4,000 feet over much of the SF peninsula and into the
| Golden Gate. The consequence is that shallow maritime
| convection can be poorly observed by the radar, and you can
| frequently have low cloud decks that produce noticeable
| drizzle or light rain (although possibly not greatly
| accumulating) across the city and surrounding area wihtout
| seeing anything on radar. Since Dark Sky wasn't much more
| than re-packaged NEXRAD data, it has a GIGO problem - if
| the radars don't see rain, Dark Sky won't predict anything
| for you.
|
| The exception are the large storm systems that come ashore
| a few times per year in the Winter and Spring. Those
| systems behave extremely linearly, so they were "easy" for
| the algorithms that Dark Sky used to process the radar
| data. That ease of analysis combined with infrequency
| probably skews the perception that Dark Sky performed well
| in the Bay Area.
|
| For what it's worth, I was involved in a study that
| analyzed the performance of several consumer and enterprise
| products' performance for reporting and forecasting light
| rain specifically in the Bay Area, and Dark Sky was
| indistinguishable from other data products that very
| obviously used raw, unprocessed NEXRAD data.
| mh- wrote:
| That's great context, thank you.
|
| I think my only response is that my bar for "incredibly
| accurate" has gotten very, very low, given the
| performance here where I'm living now.
|
| I obviously haven't done any kind of quantitative
| analysis, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's
| genuinely worse than a coin toss.
|
| Oh, I should add that I was living in East Bay closer to
| Walnut Creek for much of my time there. If I understand
| your point about the radar coverage correctly, I expect
| the Oakland hills topology would interact with that
| limitation somehow?
| counters wrote:
| I'm pretty sure KMUX is fully unobstructed (no beam
| blockage) at the lowest scan elevation, but I don't have
| a graphic or source at my fingertips to confirm that. I
| don't recall any difference in quality between East Bay
| and interior up through Walnut Creek and the SF / Golden
| Gate peninsulas.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2023)
|
| Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35263115
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35263115 - March 2023 (251
| comments)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Been using Merry Sky (https://merrysky.net) quite happily as a
| replacement mostly for the layout/quick data viz. Mostly
| accurate/helpful as Dark Sky was, tho some rare data blackouts
| when it can't pull the data or whatever, but it's back in a few
| hours
| jszymborski wrote:
| Second Merry Sky
| yokoprime wrote:
| Looks cool, but wasn't available for where I live in Europe, so
| never got to experience it.
| nate wrote:
| Tangent maybe. But when I used Dark Sky, I and everyone who asked
| me about the weather and I'd give them data from Dark Sky were
| always impressed by my accuracy for knowing when it would rain
| and stop raining. Now I use Carrot with the AccuWeather(sp) api,
| and it'll be pouring right on top of me, and Carrot tells me "no
| rain for the hour". Is this just weather getting harder and
| harder to predict, or is AccuWeather trash, or anyone else find
| something that seems as accurate as Dark Sky was?
| culi wrote:
| I find the same issues with Apple's weather app. And even
| Windy's notifications. The only helpful thing is an actual
| heatmap visualization of rain. That always gives you a lot more
| context and a better understanding of what's happening and for
| how long. I actually really love Apple's rain heatmap
| techsupporter wrote:
| One of the many reasons I pay for Carrot is to get the other,
| more expensive, data sources. If you do stump up, you get
| access to the Apple Weather API--what once was Dark Sky--as
| well as Foreca. I've found both of them to be very accurate
| based on what Carrot reports.
|
| (For what it's worth, I never used the Dark Sky app directly.
| I've always consumed it via Carrot or a free API key that Dark
| Sky used to give out for individual developers.)
| wil421 wrote:
| My former coworker was insufferable about Dark Sky being
| accurate but I never found that to be the case. Same with his
| insistence I use Waze to go through random parking lots, only
| to find our cowokers beat us back from lunch using a sane route
| but I am digressing.
|
| Where I am big thunderstorms are very common and it can be dry
| a quarter mile away. It's a good indicator but I never found
| Dark Sky, Accuwhatever, or Apple Weather to be accurate with
| the rain forecast.
| damontal wrote:
| Seemed like more of a gimmick to me.
|
| Many times it would say something like Rain stopping in 10
| minutes. Then 8 minutes later... Rain stopping in 15 minutes.
| On and on as it steadily rained.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| The old Weather Underground weather app is another example of an
| acquisition destroying superb graphics design. Its clarity,
| information density, and beauty has yet to be matched.
| et-al wrote:
| Weather Line was another beautifully weather app based on Dark
| Sky I really miss:
|
| https://vimeo.com/364505041
|
| https://kevinclark.ca/work/weatherline/
| dmd wrote:
| https://weathergraph.app/ is its spiritual successor.
| ckolkey wrote:
| I've been using flowX for many years, first on android and now on
| ios. I've found it to be incredibly customisable, and
| particularly good at visualising incoming weather. Gladly paid
| for it for years now
|
| https://www.flowx.io/
| whalesalad wrote:
| I always thought Dark Sky had one of the worst UI's on the
| planet.
| kasperset wrote:
| I like this simplistic presentation of Weather Strip
| https://www.weatherstrip.app/ I think it builds upon this Wetter
| for iOS app http://wetter.micw.org/apps/wetter/index.php
|
| Wetter is more detailed and complicated to read as compared to
| Weather Strip but I like the information such as CAPE and
| pressure info.
| jcalx wrote:
| The Dark Sky blog [1] had a post on their (then-new) app design,
| and also had many other posts on some details of their weather
| prediction algorithms and other technical bits. Sadly the blog
| was deleted after the Apple acquisition, but it is archived on
| the Wayback Machine. Some good reading!
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20191210071310/https://blog.dark...
| bradgessler wrote:
| The one problem it had, that it still has to this day under
| Apple's reign, is not being able to tell the difference between
| clear skies and if the precipitation map tiles are still loading.
| moepstar wrote:
| > if the precipitation map tiles are still loading.
|
| which they seem to do for prolonged periods or won't load at
| all, no matter the hardware and internet connection (tested on:
| iPhone 8+, iPhone SE 2020, iPhone 15 Pro - makes no difference)
|
| Most infuriating thing they do (while we're at it): load
| _everything except_ the area i 'm interested in. I can't
| even...
| bradgessler wrote:
| Yeah. Given how many iPhones are deployed into the world, I
| wonder how many people looked at that data visualization and
| thought, "Clear skies! I guess I'll continue..." and instead
| headed directly into inclement weather.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Not quite as feature-rich, but for a similar "shape-based" UI,
| Weather Strip is fantastic. It provides, IMO, an even clearer
| picture of the weather than dark sky did.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Is DarkSky _not_ an actual weather app?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35268026
|
| > Meteorologists seemed to feel that Dark Sky was a graphics
| processing tool, not a weather app.
|
| --- "Any weather forecast beyond a couple of
| hours ... depend on supercomputer models that work according to
| the laws of physics ... But when we talk about Dark Sky, all it
| was doing was taking the visual input of the radar and
| extrapolating what was going to happen over the next couple of
| hours."
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/dark-sky-weather-app-ap...
| georgehotelling wrote:
| Every time I looked at the animated weather app, I would see
| the animation start in the past where clouds moved and grew and
| shrank naturally. As soon as it passed the present moment, the
| clouds would become fixed shapes and continue on whatever their
| current vector is. In the visualization there was no attempt to
| model clouds growing and shrinking. The clouds would suddenly
| start skidding across the screen.
|
| I've read that is what the underlying precipitation "models"
| did as well, but obviously can't confirm.
| counters wrote:
| Yes; they basically just extrapolated from these "rain blobs"
| on the visualization as the short-term forecast they provided
| to users. There are some long-since wiped blog posts that
| provide a bit more context on how they do a little bit of
| statistical processing of the general forecast model output
| to help with they "hyper-localization," but the reality is
| that it was terribly unsophisticated relatively to what is
| traditionally done in meteorology.
|
| The rain nowcasting feature that Dark Sky popularized is now
| table stakes in any consumer weather app. There's little
| value in making these types of forecasts any more complex
| (e.g. using AI or other contemporary techniques) because they
| still have egregious and noticeable failure modes. And it's
| so trivial to make this type of forecast that there is open
| source software you can easily run to do it [1].
|
| [1]: https://pysteps.github.io/
| imp0cat wrote:
| Look at windy.com, their cloud prediction works pretty much
| the same.
| IshKebab wrote:
| How does that make it "not a weather app"? This is just dumb
| gatekeeping.
| dwaite wrote:
| I imagine because it operated counter to basic meteorological
| theory.
|
| The difference is that 15 minute rain forecasts don't need
| that to be usefully accurate.
|
| A model of equivalent simplicity would be about as accurate
| as the farmer's almanac for a 10 day forecast.
| hampelm wrote:
| Unlike the meteorologists, darksky actually worked and would
| tell you when it was about to rain
| Flop7331 wrote:
| Except it did that and communicated about it better than any
| other "weather app"
| i80and wrote:
| If that's all it took for Dark Sky on the backend to do what it
| did, then there's even less excuse for the lack of a good
| replacement in 2024.
| dooglius wrote:
| Is predicting beyond a couple hours all that useful/important?
| shagie wrote:
| For the eclipse, I was using hyperlocal forecasts for the
| next day (and next two) for planning for which direction to
| go, where to stay, and where to head the next day.
|
| The morning of the eclipse it was a question of "this town or
| that town or that other town at this time."
|
| This may be an edge case, but there are certainly times where
| prediction for a certain time 24h or 48h in advance is
| useful.
| dwaite wrote:
| What were you using for hyperlocal projective forecasts
| that far in advance?
| shagie wrote:
| Weather app, yr.no (e.g. https://www.yr.no/en/details/tab
| le/2-4235193/United%20States... ) , myradar, and
| pivotalweather (which gave access to a number of
| different models). In the case of things that gave maps,
| it was "look at the location on the map".
|
| It wasn't necessarily "I want to know the weather for
| this block" but "I want to know the weather for this
| square mile."
|
| One of the features that I liked in Dark Sky of very old
| (it was removed well before Apple decided to buy them)
| was the Lines feature which showed the models that it
| used. Knowing how to get at and read the models
| themselves (and asking the weather geek who I work with
| about the strengths and weaknesses of each model - "well
| X is good, but it over predicts precipitation and cloud
| cover within 50 miles of a lake that can produce lake
| effects, but if you're not near a lake its spot on
| for...").
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Seems like an strawman comparison to me?
|
| Dark Sky's hyper-local weather predictions weren't based on
| projecting hours into the future. They were based on very
| small-scale extrapolation and interpolation.
|
| The meteorologists with their supercomputers aren't, to the
| best of my knowledge, even trying to do that. And Dark Sky
| wasn't trying to compete with their models, either. For that
| kind of long-term forecasting, it was simply passing along the
| forecasts that meteorological services used those models to
| produce.
| cameldrv wrote:
| On a related note, I had to stop using the Apple weather app
| because it doesn't even get the current temperature right at my
| house. Right now, Apple weather is saying it's 61 degrees and
| Weather Underground is saying 72.
| metabagel wrote:
| Exactly. It's junk. It can't even accurately report the current
| weather.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I have never used Dark Sky, although I have to say the Apple
| Weather app is one of the best I've seen so far (for my area). It
| works really well and it can often tell weather changes down to
| the minute.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I miss Dark Sky a lot and Apple totally screwed it up. I sponsor
| the Pirate Weather (https://pirateweather.net/) project which
| duplicates the Dark Sky API and used it to make my own display:
| https://blog.jgc.org/2023/04/a-personal-weather-picture-usin...
|
| Pirate Weather is the backend for the Dark Sky-like Merry Sky:
| https://merrysky.net/
| webel0 wrote:
| Are there any comparisons of weather apps by area? For example,
| "for the San Francisco bay area, apple weather is most accurate
| on rain. But for NYC accuweather is better." I suppose you ought
| to be comparing weather APIs rather than apps but it would be
| most usable if you just knew which app to download.
| smkelly wrote:
| Not really apps, but here's a tool that can do it by forecast
| data source: https://www.forecastadvisor.com
| g_sch wrote:
| The feature I miss most about Dark Sky was that it allowed you to
| visualize changes in dew point throughout the day.
|
| Where I live (US East Coast), the weather can feel dramatically
| different depending on the humidity. Relative Humidity has always
| felt to me like a poor way of measuring how humid the weather
| will feel. For example, 50% RH at 84oF will feel lightly humid
| and generally pleasant, whereas 50% RH at at 97oF will feel like
| a swamp. The dew points at those respective points - 63oF and
| 75oF - do a much better job at immediately conveying how humid
| the air will feel.
|
| Dark Sky used to show hourly dew point graphs that you could
| browse throughout the week and see when the humidity would break
| (or return). Apple Weather does show you the dew point, but only
| when you select a point on the RH graph. So to track the dew
| point over the coming week, you basically need to drag your
| finger over each day's graph and observe the changing numbers.
|
| I think this is probably just due to the lack of general
| awareness about how dew point is a more elegant shorthand for
| "absolute humidity" than any other weather metric currently in
| use. I hope there will be more of us in the future!
| jachee wrote:
| Relative Humidity is _directly_ tied to the dew point. Take a
| look back at the humidity forecast and look right under the
| humidity percentage. The dew point is there. If you tap a point
| in the future on the graph of forecast changes, the dew point
| is also registered there.
| g_sch wrote:
| Yes, but what I'd really like to see is a visual graph of the
| dew point over the course of a day. The graph currently only
| shows RH%, and the only way to see _how the dew point will
| change over the course of a day_ is to drag your finger over
| the RH% graph and watch the dew point number change.
| Leftium wrote:
| - Relative humidity is also directly tied to the current
| temperature. (Warmer air can hold more moisture.)
|
| - The dew point is independent from the temperature, so it is
| effectively a measure of "absolute humidity."
|
| - While both measurements have their advantages, I find dew
| point a better indicator of the "mugginess." Also it is
| easier to estimate the relative humidity given the dew point
| vs. estimate the dew point given the relative humidity.
|
| - You can compare both here: https://weather-
| sense.leftium.com (humidity plot disabled, but the value can
| be checked by hovering.)
| jmbwell wrote:
| Here in Houston as well, dew point is as important as
| temperature and %PoP. Apple Weather suffices for now but I hope
| it gets richer with the various types of data that are of
| greater relevance in different regions.
| password4321 wrote:
| Good idea! I just added humidity to my home screen widget using
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloud3squa...
| travisluis wrote:
| I too miss the dew point feature. The best replacement for Dark
| Sky I've found is this 10-day view of Weather Underground
| that's unfortunately only available on their website--I just
| bookmark the website on my phone home screen.
| https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/tx/austin/30.27,-97...
| ck2 wrote:
| They are basically collapsing the weather gov plots into a
| single graph or two
|
| (weather gov data is open/free, you can pull it down and plot
| anyway you want)
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical.
| ..
| havaloc wrote:
| https://www.windy.com/-Menu/menu?dewpoint
|
| Windy.com to the rescue for dewpoint lovers.
| Izkata wrote:
| Dew point is on Wunderground, you have to click the
| "Customize" button and check the box. And yes, it does
| remember across visits.
| Izkata wrote:
| > that's unfortunately only available on their website
|
| A very old version of their Android app had that view as a
| 3-day widget for the home screen. Right after it was bought
| they did a major upgrade and removed a ton of functionality,
| that widget included.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Carrot weather has dewpoint graphs (depending on source
| used).
| Leftium wrote:
| https://weather-sense.leftium.com
|
| My web app plots hourly dew point for the next 24 hours, next 7
| days, and past 2 days. (Still WIP.)
|
| Inspired by https://merrysky.net (can also plot dew point),
| which was inspired by Dark Sky.
| simlevesque wrote:
| I like your app. I'm planning a trip next week and it was so
| easy to see the next few days.
| Leftium wrote:
| Great! Until UI for setting the location is implemented,
| you can set the location with the `n` (or `name`) URL
| parameter like this:
|
| - https://weather-sense.leftium.com/?n=90210
|
| - https://weather-sense.leftium.com/?n=new+york
| simlevesque wrote:
| You seem to know what you are doing, but I have to say
| that the map's colors make it really hard to see the
| radar data.
|
| Also the toggle on hover for the day selection is not
| easy on desktop and very hard on mobile. I'd prefer a
| simple toggle.
| Leftium wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback.
|
| I picked the Watercolor map style[1] because it looked
| pretty and the detail from other styles wasn't needed
| (like street names).
|
| Then I picked The Weather Channel radar color scheme[2]
| because the green-to-red gradients seemed to contrast
| well with the Watercolor map style.
|
| What map style/radar color scheme combination would you
| prefer? Perhaps I can make this configurable... (Is there
| any chance there simply was no precipitation on your
| map?)
|
| ---
|
| I am not sure what you mean by "toggle on hover." Hover
| is meant to work without any toggling.
|
| The yellow line indicates which stats are currently being
| shown.
|
| Ideally, when the mouse cursor is over a timeline, it
| shows the stats for that time. Otherwise the stats for
| the current condition are shown.
|
| Sometimes the hover is a little buggy; click + dragging
| on the timeline or click + dragging outside a timeline
| usually fixes it.
|
| Usually it works better on mobile! If your finger is
| touching a timeline, that is considered hovering.
| Otherwise the current stats are shown.
|
| [1]: https://stadiamaps.com/themes
|
| [2]: https://www.rainviewer.com/weather-radar-map-
| live.html
| simlevesque wrote:
| No there is precipitation on the map. I'd prefer
| something light or dark, limited to no colors.
|
| The new one is way better. I'd like to see the streets
| and city names if possible because with just the
| watercolor I feel like I'm missing infos.
| Leftium wrote:
| I updated the app so the map layer is now grayscale.
|
| That should make the colored radar data easier to see!
| ProxCoques wrote:
| Excellent app! And I'm sure I'm not the only one to
| congratulate you in showing past weather - a so obviously
| useful feature that 99% of all weather apps never have.
| Leftium wrote:
| Yes~ I wrote about this over ten years ago:
| https://blog.leftium.com/2013/12/how-to-display-
| temperature-...
|
| Sadly, Naver stopped showing the past weather like that.
|
| This was one of the main motivations for creating
| UltraWeather: https://github.com/Leftium/ultra-
| weather#readme
|
| UltraWeather was missing some features like AQI and
| minutely rain predictions (coming soon!) so I made
| WeatherSense ^^
| jp191919 wrote:
| I used to love Dark Sky on android. Finally settled on a using a
| combination of Breezy Weather and Flowx
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I find it wild that no one has fully replaced Dark Sky, ideally
| with an outright clone. Both the visualization and the unique
| "it's about to rain where you are" prediction system. I've tried
| a lot of clones of the latter and none work nearly as well.
|
| These days I go to windy.com for my weather nerd needs but it's
| quite different from Dark Sky.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| The default weather app on my Samsung phone looks an awful lot
| like Apple's default weather app, but it has a line graph below
| the hourly temperatures.
|
| I check it a couple times a day, and it's good enough for my
| needs. My bar's pretty low, though. The weather is rather
| unpredictable where I live; IME there's really no such thing as
| an accurate hourly forecast more than ~12 hours out. On Sunday
| night, today's forecast showed heavy rain and thunderstorms.
| Currently, it's 85 and there isn't a cloud in the sky. No
| amount of good dataviz can make up for that.
|
| If you lived somewhere where you might take weather forecast
| accuracy for granted, I can see why you'd hate Samsung's app.
| It does the 24-hour hourly forecast and the 10-day daily
| summary just fine, but that's it. It'll show you current air
| quality and humidity, but no forecast data for those. Also, if
| you tap anything to see more details, it just launches an
| AccuWeather web page.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| it is so important that somebody stands up to apple fanboization
| and points out that their UI design is mediocre at best.
| ck2 wrote:
| I actually like the weather gov format, it's how my brain works
|
| put your lat/lon on the end
|
| (google HQ)
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical...
|
| (amazon HQ)
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical...
|
| The data is open/free, you can pull down the raw data and make it
| look however you want.
|
| I just wish there was an easy website to get Google's new AI
| weather which supposedly is far more accurate (only on certain
| android builds?)
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't get it. What is the irreplaceable part? You're all
| software engineers. Why don't you just write the software you're
| missing?
|
| I'd do it but I know I don't care about the weather like this. I
| just ask my voice assistant in broad terms. So I would suck at
| building it. But you guys all care. Why is it non replicable?
| nirav72 wrote:
| Dark Sky was incredible. I could time my out door activity like
| going for a run or do yard work based on its real time rain
| alerts down to the minute or two. Haven't found anything that
| accurate for forecasting. I was really hoping Apple would've
| merged some of that into their own IOS weather app. But it never
| happened.
| antisthenes wrote:
| So why not replicate it?
|
| Dark Sky is basically just fancy visualization for csv/json data
| from a weather API.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| To challenge Dark Sky they have to beat nostalgia, not reality.
| The default weather app is probably good enough for most
| people.
| joshe wrote:
| I dearly wish Apple would just publish Dark Sky again. Let the
| Weather app be whatever super clean design hero you want, just
| give us back this perfect information dense weather app to use
| day to day.
|
| There have to be dozens of devs in apple who would love to be on
| the 1-2 person team it would take to maintain it. (It was a 2
| person startup for years, don't come at me with how hard stuff
| is.) It could even be a reward for good service, "ok you
| successfully mucked around with weird EU privacy law in the
| health app for 2 years, instead of a sabbatical for therapy how
| about you get to work on Dark Sky for a year?"
| voidfunc wrote:
| Somewhere in Cupertino an Apple UX engineer is furrowing their
| brow at you.
|
| How dare you want information!
| dwaite wrote:
| What good would that be without the information backing it?
| (The DarkSky API server)
|
| And if that information does still exist in the (public) Apple
| Weather API, why hasn't anyone (not just some Apple Engineer)
| just created an app with the views people care about?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Here me out: Dark Sky amazingness is why we need to get rid of
| these tech monopolies
|
| None of this amazing innovation comes from big companies
|
| Now it's swallowed up, resting and vesting
| akeck wrote:
| My "favorite" behavior on the new post-DarkSky Weather app is
| that each of the phones in the house give different info re the
| weather directly outside. The worst is my child's phone which has
| its language set to Mandarin (the only substantive difference
| between their phone and our phones). Their Weather app is usually
| way off from our phones. None of the phones match the info given
| by NWS.
| ak217 wrote:
| I've never used Dark Sky, but the most innovative weather
| app/site I've used is definitely Weather Underground. Their radar
| and 10-day view are second to none.
|
| It does sound like Dark Sky had one useful feature that has no
| match - analyzing weather radar and sending personalized rain
| alert push notifications based on your location. That's pretty
| awesome.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This is why I have said recently and have gotten massive
| downvotes: do not sell your company and "exit". The world will
| become a much better place if you do not plan for an exit, but
| plan to make a better world.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| I love data visualization and run https://weathergraph.app - an
| iOS/Apple watch/mac app that people often praise for getting many
| weather metrics into one view. Dew point is surprisingly
| underrated metric that strongly affects how the weather feels
| like.
|
| It also has a 'Dark Sky emulation' mode for everyone who loved
| the now defunct app.
|
| I use Foreca, which consistently ranks among top 3 services on
| forecastadvisor.com, and Pirate Weather & Open-Meteo, which are
| two awesome indie services that access and enrich the best public
| models.
|
| Here is how it looks like: https://imgur.com/gallery/Rduy7qc
| user_7832 wrote:
| I just installed your app, and it certainly looks nice.
|
| Is there no way to use the app (with free data sources) at your
| own location? Right now it appears to choose a random demo
| location. It's a pity because I don't use weather apps that
| much to justify spending money but I appreciate the app
| nonetheless.
| fiforpg wrote:
| Just as the author of this blog, I found Dark Sky UI uniquely
| concise and informative. I managed to somewhat replace it with
| not one, but two apps (on Android):
|
| - OpenWeather for a dense, one-page view of short-term upcoming
| conditions (temperature, precipitation) and the weekly forecast.
|
| - Shadow Weather for extra details: cloud cover, wind directions,
| etc.
| egypturnash wrote:
| When Apple killed Dark Sky, I ended up with Weather Strip. It
| does a really good job of giving me the same amount of
| information density. Possibly even better - one fairly readable
| graph combines rain probability, temperature, cloudiness, and
| estimated inches of rain into a single glance.
| https://www.weatherstrip.app
| dotancohen wrote:
| That looks absolutely terrific. Does anybody know an Android
| equivalent?
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