[HN Gopher] Show HN: Weather2Geo - Geolocate screenshots from we...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Weather2Geo - Geolocate screenshots from weather widgets
        
       Hi HN,  I built an OSINT tool called Weather2Geo that helps locate
       where a screenshot was taken based on the weather widget data
       visible (e.g. temp, condition, and local time in the taskbar).
       People often post these without realizing how specific those values
       can be in combination.  It works by comparing the given weather
       condition, temperature, and time against current data from
       thousands of cities. It's timezone-aware, supports fuzzy matching,
       and groups results geographically to reduce noise.  It's most
       effective on recent screenshots, ideally taken within the last hour
       --since weather and daylight conditions change quickly.  The tool
       helps pinpoint likely locations when screenshots lack EXIF data or
       other traditional OSINT clues.  It's open source here:
       https://github.com/elliott-diy/Weather2Geo  Would love feedback,
       bug reports, or to hear if you think this has other use cases.  -
       Elliott
        
       Author : Elliott-Diy
       Score  : 47 points
       Date   : 2025-05-27 22:31 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | progbits wrote:
       | Do you plan to scrape the data and maintain a historical database
       | so old screenshots can be used too?
       | 
       | Would be really cool but I imagine it could be difficult to get
       | past rate limits.
        
         | Elliott-Diy wrote:
         | That's actually an end goal! I'm thinking of setting up a
         | system to crowdsource this: if people opt in, the tool could
         | cache the weather data it pulls and share it to help build a
         | distributed historical dataset.
        
           | tgv wrote:
           | There are meteorological services with open data access:
           | https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/,
           | https://english.knmidata.nl/open-dat,
           | https://climatedataportal.metoffice.gov.uk/
           | 
           | Mapping that would be quite a bit of work, I imagine.
        
             | Elliott-Diy wrote:
             | Yeah, mapping it would definitely be a project. I looked
             | into using open data from those sources, but ran into
             | issues where the values didn't match what MSN reports
             | (which is what the Windows weather widget uses). Even small
             | differences in temperature or how conditions are worded
             | ("partly sunny" vs. "mostly sunny") can throw off the
             | match. I'm planning to try using open data for historical
             | screenshots eventually, but I expect it'll reduce accuracy
             | greatly.
        
         | rconti wrote:
         | Using a time series database would be great here.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-05-29 23:01 UTC)