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Fortunately someone recreated a clone at https://merrysky.net, which was featured [1] on HN some time ago.

I've used it daily since.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34155191



It renders the information totally different. How can it be a clone?


Inspired by MerrySky: https://weather-sense.leftium.com

Some differences:

- Shows weather from yesterday for comparison

- All hourly plot trackers connected; not just the top one

- Includes AQI

- Sky color visualization (try scrubbing across dawn/dusk!)

- Non-precipitation colors approximate sky color (haziness)

- Temperature variation visualized both spatially and with colors

- Data source is Open Meteo

- Planned: 60 minutely forecast like https://openweathermap.org


There's no obvious way to change the location of the prediction. Can it be done, to support the "travelling soon" use cases?


Yes, but currently only possible via url param:

- https://weather-sense.leftium.com/?n=nyc

n is short for "name" and uses the Open Meteo geocoding API[1].

[1]: https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/geocoding-api


And a toast to its source, the drop-in PirateWeather API: https://pirateweather.net/


Thanks for the mention! I'm the author of merrysky. Opened to feedback. What would you say you miss the most?


Not missed but ideas for the future

* Adopt a colour scheme with similarity to the old BOM?

* Some way to store longer baseline movie animations in local state so people can avoid cost in you but run the weather radar for longer?

* Tide info? Hyper specific to people who do water things. Willyweather does this really well.

I use Willyweather and Windy. I used to use a weather app written by some mob called "shifty jelly" and their git logs were .. hysterical. Drunk fairy penguins seemed to cause most of the bugs.


Dataviz suggestions from top of the page to the bottom:

- Location search & display: no English version, only localized names, which is hard to reason if you don't know native language.

- Summary: a) what does precip. in % mean and how it correlates with cm? b) pressure is only displayed in hPa, while some countries prefer mmHg; c) what does ozone index mean and why is it important?

- Next 24 hours: visual indication for temp variation through the day would be easier to reason than just by looking at numbers (as discussed in TFA).

- Next 7 days: a) unnecessary precision for y-axis (e.g. 10.9°C vs. 11°C); b) band overshoot actual values (e.g. if I see 10..−10°C, I assume that would be max/min temp, but in fact it is 8..−9°C, which is impossible to tell without hovering mouse over); c) no horiz. line through 0°C; d) no horiz. lines through y-axis ticks, which makes it harder to reason about values closer to the end of the graph; e) precip. in cm tells little, especially when band is alike (0.00..0.80 cm) - peaks on graphs look like a lot, in fact they are not? g) seeing blue precip. graph subconsciously means 'rain' to me, while in fact it would be snow; f) labels for y-axis are at the same time very small, rotated 90° and also take too much horizontal space from the graph.

- Map: moving mouse over next 7 days graph causes time shown on map to change that would make sense if map's timeline would cover all 7 days, but it only covers small part of today.

- Week: a) fog icons look like they have solid white square background, which seems to be off compared to other icons; b) low/high values are hard to reason about, especially when it says 'Low … at 11am' and there is no tick labeled '11am' (10am .. 12pm) - displaying a line through coldest/warmest hours with °C value next to it would be much easier to understand.

Also: displaying air quality prediction based on last year's AQ would be helpful.


Could you tell me the significance of the location in Australia that's used by default? I frequently clear browser cookies and history so it often jumps back there, so I see that location a lot, but can never envision exactly why it was the default. (Specifically, a point along Gol Gol Road in Arumpo, NSW, Australia.)


May be too specific but as a European in the US, I would love to be able to see temperature in F and C at the same time!


Thx bro. I stumbled into this thread thinking it was about something else, and left with a new favorite weather bookmark.

Nice things:

  - Loads fast
  - Nice vis of both today and week
  - Can mouse over the visualizations to get precise readouts.



This is neat, but I find the charts extremely hard to parse due to the color gradients and the similar shades, especially of blue and teal. I find the Merry Sky charts a lot easier to understand.


Thanks for the feedback. You helped make my app more readable (I went a little overboard on the gradients; I thought the gradients would help convey the sky condition):

- Now most gradients are disabled by default. (toggle here: https://weather-sense.leftium.com/wmo-codes)

- Also added shadow/glow to plot lines so they "pop out" more.

I'm not sure which parts you think are blue and teal. Open to suggestions for better colors! (There are only so many colors, and I like keeping the precipitation related colors all bluish.)


Perhaps I should add an option to disable gradients.

There's a screen shot showing what it used to look like before gradients: https://github.com/Leftium/weather-sense


It's not clear how to switch to sane units of measurement.


You mean you prefer C over F? Tapping any temperature will toggle between the two. (This always comes up, so the app should probably default to units based on the user's location: the default is F only if the app detects you're in the US)

- Toggling C/F also toggles the scale on the radar to km. Eventually, I will get around to adding a dedicated settings page.

- However, the app was designed so one could get a sense of the weather without numeric labels: temperature is a very relative experience, so use the spatial/color cues to compare yesterday, today, and forecast days.

- Notice now much more space C needs when toggling between C and F. F's 0 to 99 range fits the natural range of temperatures humans experience (weather, body temperature). Humans just don't experience anything beyond 50 degrees C. At the same time, a single delta C is too large for the precision human bodies can detect. (Humans need something closer to 0.5C precision, which is what 1 degree F is.)

- As as result C needs nearly twice as much horizontal space compared to F: due to going negative more often and needing an extra decimal for minimal precision required.


I'd sneak in 'Toggle C/F' somewhere and hook it to the same function you use on the numbers.

Fahrenheit goes negative at a measly -18C. Where I live -20 to -30C is not uncommon. Whether it's 17.5 or 18C typically does not matter, continual changes in wind and other factors will for pretty much all practical purposes quench that difference.


Fair enough. I added a toggle button and removed decimal °C.

Weather uncertainty may make that extra precision less useful.


Great rec! Thanks! See also Windy.app (a paid app w/ great dataviz, dx, and robust set of data sources).


Windy.app looks good visually, but once you start using it, the UX is all over the place. Always find it frustrating.


Interesting! I used it heavily for years as a sailor and found it intuitive. Clearly, YMMV. :)


for what it's worth, most people i know prefer windy.com over windy.app

Windy.app is for wind based water activities. Windy.com is a data-heavy weather information site.


As a windsurfer, wingfoiler, and kitesurfer i can only say that both Windy.app a nd Windy.com are awesome. Like the ability to compare different models easily.




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