[HN Gopher] Visualizing Weather Forecasts Through Landscape Imagery
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Visualizing Weather Forecasts Through Landscape Imagery
        
       Author : lds133
       Score  : 265 points
       Date   : 2024-09-20 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | LeoPanthera wrote:
       | Ha, this is great. I hooked up an old photo frame to OpenAI's
       | DALL-E image generator, which is told to make an image based on
       | the current weather data right now. It updates every few hours.
       | 
       | This is what it's showing right now: https://ibb.co/8K5jZ3B
        
         | riedel wrote:
         | See also: https://github.com/blixt/sol-mate-eink (using city
         | images)
        
           | kbutler wrote:
           | This is really lovely!
        
       | rickcarlino wrote:
       | Love the monochrome artwork, great work on this project.
        
       | 3abiton wrote:
       | This is one of the best microcontroller projects I've encoutered
       | recently! Amazing work!
        
       | tamimio wrote:
       | Looks great, would love if it was fully offline and interface
       | with sensors directly
        
         | celie56 wrote:
         | Maybe I misread the docs, but it looked like it was generating
         | a visual for the whole day. If this were offline you could have
         | it double as a clock and regenerate the image every N minutes.
        
       | nelblu wrote:
       | Great work! That said if we are focusing on the UX, windy.com has
       | got the best weather reporting experience.
       | 
       | Ex: I am almost never interested in "30% chance of shower at
       | 08:00pm" type of forecast. I am more interested in the trend in
       | which the clouds/rains are moving. This helps me figure out which
       | direction I can drive to get the best sunshine or whatever else.
       | 
       | Is there anyone else who is doing it the way windy.com is doing?
       | I really love them, and so far their experience is great (almost
       | no dark UX patterns), that said I would love to see some more
       | competition in this space.
        
         | captainkrtek wrote:
         | I'm a big fan of Meteoblue, they provide a lot of different
         | forecast ensemble visualizations. While not the same as windy
         | in terms of ux, it does a good job of conveying model
         | uncertainty and model agreement.
        
         | unanimous wrote:
         | Zoom Earth is similar to Windy.com
         | 
         | https://zoom.earth/
        
         | adamfeldman wrote:
         | Weather Strip (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weather-
         | strip/id1528594026
        
         | jasonmarks_ wrote:
         | > This helps me figure out which direction I can drive to get
         | the best sunshine or whatever else.
         | 
         | I published a road trip weather app that crunches forecasts for
         | you if you're going for a drive and would like to avoid the
         | worst of the weather. It's great for evaluating whether to
         | start a trip during the evening or the next morning. Timestamps
         | are built using Google directions so you have about as accurate
         | a forecast as you can in 2024.
         | 
         | > I am almost never interested in "30% chance of shower at
         | 08:00pm" type of forecast.
         | 
         | I understand this sentiment but that is sorta where medium term
         | forecasting is right now.
         | 
         | Android or iOS https://weatherthetrip.com/download
        
         | kbutler wrote:
         | We used windy.com earlier this year to choose our location for
         | the total eclipse in Texas. Worked out perfectly - great view
         | for the eclipse, then the clouds rolled in...
        
       | xd1936 wrote:
       | Love love love love this. This would be great for kids. I pitched
       | a very similar "weather for kids" visualizer product idea on the
       | very first episode of my podcast.
       | 
       | https://spitball.show/@podcast/episodes/1
        
       | jerjerjer wrote:
       | From readme:
       | 
       | > Traditional weather stations often display sensor readings as
       | raw numerical data. Navigating these dashboards can be
       | overwhelming and stressful, as it requires significant effort to
       | locate, interpret, and visualize specific parameters effectively.
       | 
       | Simply fascinating. The reverse holds true for me. Numbers
       | provide easily identifiable and recognizable references, while
       | sample images look incomprehensible to me. Without accompanying
       | descriptions, I'd never guess what the author is getting at
       | (except in the broadest of strokes). To each their own, of
       | course.
        
       | jp57 wrote:
       | It's an interesting idea, but some of the image semantics seem
       | weirdly wrong. In particular, the sky shouldn't be light at
       | night, and the sun shouldn't be high at sunrise.
       | 
       | If you have to learn counterintuitive things like "the appearance
       | of the sun anywhere in the sky indicates sunrise", and "nighttime
       | is indicated by, well, idk what exactly, but it's not darkness",
       | it kind of fails at it's main purpose, I think.
       | 
       | EDIT: I'll add that many weather apps have a left-to-right
       | timeline of some sort, and indicate sunrise and sunset with
       | intuitive iconography.
       | 
       | EDIT2: The Windy.com timeline view shows sky condition,
       | day/night, moon phase, temperature, precipitation, and wind speed
       | and direction in a nice compact left-to-right timeline. (click
       | the summary in the upper left)
        
       | yaj54 wrote:
       | It's like a line-scan camera for the weather.
        
       | SebastianKra wrote:
       | If you'd like to see this implemented in a practical way, check
       | out Weather Strip.
       | 
       | It's a master class in information density while also being
       | intuitive and readable.
       | 
       | https://www.weatherstrip.app/
        
         | anonova wrote:
         | Note that this kind of visualization is just the collapsed form
         | of a standard forecast graph, e.g.
         | 
         | https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.39&lon=-122...
         | 
         | https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/mountain-view
        
           | DiggyJohnson wrote:
           | Dang Mountain View has some enviable conditions...
        
       | lb1lf wrote:
       | In a somewhat related vein, the wonderful Ootside[0] website
       | gives you the weather with a Scottish twist.
       | 
       | Mostly, the weather around where I live is described as 'Mostly
       | shite'.
       | 
       | [0] https://ootsi.de/
        
       | bobabob wrote:
       | It looks lovely but it's absolutely incomprehensible beyond
       | "maybe it'll rain" and "maybe i'll be sunny". Without the
       | explanation of what the symbols meant I'd never guess.
        
       | pilooch wrote:
       | Can't wait for the stable diffusion version :)
        
       | qnleigh wrote:
       | This is super-fun. Kinda makes me want to do the following: set
       | up a camera to take regular photos of a greenspace near my house.
       | Record couldcover data and date stamps alongside the images, and
       | then then show the most similar image to the current forecast as
       | a background, maybe on my laptop. Wouldn't convey as much
       | information as this project, but it could be very satisfying.
        
       | bazzargh wrote:
       | I noodled with a project a couple of years ago to pick art based
       | on the weather https://bazzargh.github.io/weather/
       | 
       | put it on 'manual filter' and try setting some of the filters,
       | you can see the tagged images it comes up with. I wasn't really
       | interested in this being an accurate weather report, I was
       | thinking more of using it in a photoframe or as a desktop
       | background for mood.
       | 
       | the image tags are all in here
       | https://github.com/bazzargh/bazzargh.github.io/blob/master/w...
       | 
       | and were largely done manually, I started by picking paintings I
       | liked, then looking for gaps in the tags and trying to find
       | paintings to cover those.
        
         | duck wrote:
         | Your page is getting flagged for phishing on Chrome.
        
           | lbotos wrote:
           | In FF as well, Just reported it as "not suspicious"
        
           | bazzargh wrote:
           | Huh. That's new. I'm guessing it must have been someone who
           | read it here, I don't think I ever even posted it anywhere
           | else. I'm not sure what they could think it's phishing for;
           | there's no links out, no redirection, and nowhere for you to
           | enter any personal information; the only thing it does is
           | pull images from wikimedia, plus the source code is right
           | there for all to see?
           | 
           | If it was anyone here who reported it... mind telling us why?
        
       | lxe wrote:
       | Cute, and with small adjustments, I'd be legitimately using this.
       | There are just better ways to interpret things:
       | 
       | 1. Make the bending trees signify wind direction. Have to get
       | creative with north and south, but a tree bent down vs out can
       | do, and the bend or size and clustering of trees should signify
       | magnitude of the wind.
       | 
       | 2. Put sunrise and sunset as literally sun over the horizon, not
       | the sun and moon.
       | 
       | 3. Make the night sky shaded differently than day
       | 
       | 4. Don't start at "current time" but rather a fixed point, either
       | morning or midnight, and specify the "now" via the location of
       | the house
        
         | folli wrote:
         | All good points, agreed. Except #4, would be cute if there's
         | some animal that moves along instead of the house.
         | 
         | And perhaps playing with some kind of isometric perspective
         | could help visualize wind directions?
        
       | darrylcodes wrote:
       | This is really cool! I would use this daily if it were an app
        
       | leobg wrote:
       | These are gorgeous. What a great idea.
        
       | Ajedi32 wrote:
       | I've been using a similar concept for my Android wallpaper for a
       | while now[1].
       | 
       | I love the idea of artwork that actually conveys useful
       | information.
       | 
       | [1]:
       | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kaka.wallpaper...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-20 23:00 UTC)