Comment by growt
1 day ago
Probably depends on where you are, but here in Europe I always joke that you should prepare for the exact opposite of what apple weather tells you. A lot of times I’m literary standing in the rain and Apple tells me the chance for rain is 0%
Right, but Dark Sky had that issue too. When precipitation has hyperlocal variation, you're always going to have that problem.
The Doppler radar that "live" precipitation comes from takes 4-6 min to complete a scan, and then obviously it takes a few minutes for that all to be ingested, update models, and push to devices.
The "live" weather from Apple (and when it was Dark Sky) has always been a prediction from about 10 min ago. And if it's raining where you are but dry six blocks to the north (as happens all the time), it's understandable why it gets it wrong.
Dark Sky almost always over predicted rain for my area. I think that was kind of their strategy. That said, I very much miss Dark Sky on android.
Also I really like a tool called Forecast Advisor. https://www.forecastadvisor.com/ . It shows you the accuracy of various forecasting services for your area.
I use it whenever I travel. I don't stick with one forecast site because depending on the terrain/location their accuracy changes drastically.
Certain models are better for certain geographical features depending on the location. I tend to hangout around a lot of mountains and the difference in forecast models makes a huge difference.
That is basically my impression here in the US PNW. If it tells me rain is about to start at my location, the one thing I know with 100% certainty is that rain is not about to start any time soon.