Has EU weather sources per credits (DWD, ECMWF, EUMETSAT -- roughly what it's doing is graphing multiple models), but if you are into weather apps you're likely best off with Carrot that (a) lets you design your own UI including matching this (more or less), and (b) lets you choose among weather sources and flip among them with a tap.
If it's about cute UI and key notifications, try Hello Weather. For microcell notifications on anything, Tomorrow weather. For much better maps, WeatherMap.
For comparing multiple models, try Windy.app. For coastal barrier island use, I have 8 graphed at once, most of them EU models.
Very little reason for any weather app beyond Carrot, though Apple Weather is surprising evolved from the app of 20 years ago, no longer the 4th app to replace after messaging, maps, and browser).
Carrot is the only weather app with a vicious weather control AI singing an entire Broadway concept album about your destruction at you though.
Try your local weather app. Here in Switzerland the MeteoSwiss app is absolutely wonderful, and has all these main features:
- Uncertainty bands in the forecast (the bands are a better UX than more lines imo)
- User-supplied reports
- Many many many different maps (snow / cloud / wind / sunshine / air quality / etc)
- Alerts (not notifications, but real alerts to watch out for something)
yr.no tends to be most accurate for Scandi+Baltics somehow pretty often.
Ventusky has the best app experience in Android with many different layers like wind, precipitation, air quality and many more. Can only recommend this as well.
Yes. We pay for it with taxes! And again with our money in the App Store. But the app success is build upon the lawsuit from WetterOnline which is a private company.
The lawsuit backfired and made the state funded app well known. WetterOnline attacked the DWD because the state funded app is superior :)
I think in Italy they have some similar app. Would be nice if the EU helps us to unify the app. And add offline capabilities, bad or no internet happens. The weather radar is offline of less use but the forecast still helps.
They release videos for dangerous weather on YouTube. We’ll know for regular people, in regular cloths, speaking like regular Germans. Everyone loves it :)
I like it when important services are provided by the state and private companies. Save foundation! In worst case the state is always better. In best case they compete and public benefits. In this case the private company just sucks. But they made a good job in advertising for DWD ^^
PS: If someone would implement a nice weather for Linux (best Gtk) based upon DWD public data? DO IT!
The site doesn’t make it clear, but it’s not available worldwide. The App Store doesn’t tell you where exactly it is available, but it’s not in the UK.
This surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.
Looks lovely. I was keen to try this but US and Canada only unfortunately.
Also: subscription fatigue is real. Of course I understand that fetching weather data isn’t free etc. (even though I’m intrigued by their homegrown forecast model) but I’ve already got 10+ subscriptions on iOS and I’m not sure if I’ve got the stomach for another. Apple’s weather app is finally good though since the Dark Sky acquisition.
I'm having this problem right now, trying to plan some nice long walks out of the city but it's been raining a lot lately. I'd love some kind of map of flooding/muddy conditions, but I don't think it would be feasible without a massive effort (as whether an area is prone to flooding or turning into a mudbath after rain depends on a lot of factors).
I can't download it, as it appears to be US only. Based on the screenshots, without 'feels like' support throughout the forecast (not just for current conditions) it wouldn't be useful where I live.
This team really have been thinking about weather a lot, and it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time.
It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.
> it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time
The rainbow and sunset alerts are really cool ideas. I'm now realising that a simple tie-in to astronomical phenomena could prompt a useful notificationa around it e.g. being worth going stargazing that night. I ski–learning that the near-term forecasts just changed would help me change my schedule the day before versus trying and failing the morning of.
They sold their last weather app to Apple for like, tens of millions or something. These aren’t some random Apple employees.
Also, it seems a common misunderstanding about some weather apps: yes, most of them just package free data and steal your privacy, but some are really much more than a “weather app”. Some are attempts at building next-generation weather forecast models, which if successful are of course worth billions.
I’ve spent a lot of time building innovative weather apps, most of my career actually. And it’s always shocking to me when people say I’m wasting time or wasting my life or look at me like, “really? You’re dedicating your life to weather apps?!”
No dawg, I’m trying to improve short term forecasts to save life and property from severe events at scale!
I’m not sure what the Acme end goal is, but surely this isn’t just a “weather app”.
> I’m trying [...] to save life and property from severe events at scale
Tell me you work in Silicon Valley without telling me you work in silicon Valley.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. There is something in US startup mentality where you can't just "create an app and make a living", you have to be on a grand mission to save the world. That may be normal out there, but for the rest of the world it just seems... Get back to earth man :-)
Sure, most of us are doing nothing to help people and are using grandiose language to describe reticulating splines. I don’t think that applies to good weather apps though, a lot of people do die because they are unaware of weather events. I would be very unsurprised to learn that any major weather app has directly saved lives. The U.S is a very… weatherful place.
I used to use DarkSky for the "history data" for my platform. Querying weather for certain points in the past at certain locations. DarkSky was great for that until they were bought by Apple. Now I am using VisualCrossing for historical data. Hope Acme plans to do historical data too. But if it is US only then it is a no-go anyway.
I am going to chalk this up as another datapoint in the "Apple cannot retain talent" chart. I don't know what the heck they are doing, but everyone they've acquired seems to leave as soon as they can instead of staying.
Leave as soon as you can, along with millions and millions in cash that you got from the sale? Who wouldn't?! Why would you continue working for "the man" when you have FU-money?
I'd love to see some stats on this: people leaving to start something new (be it Apple or any other acquiring company) might be over-represent because there is not much news about people staying in their job
How are weather apps still relevant, let alone profitable enough to build a company around? This problem has been solved years ago. All the app needs to do is hook up to one or more data providers, and show some stats and pretty graphs. It's essentially a read-only frontend to an API. There are plenty of options to choose from on every platform, including not using an app at all.
The features this ad promotes all seem like solutions to nonexistent problems. "Alternate possible futures" don't give me any more confidence in the forecast—it just shows that it's not reliable, which everyone should know already. "Community reports" just add another layer of uncertainty. How can I trust that someone's report is valid or up-to-date, or that it applies to my area? Maps are nice and visually interesting, but this is not exactly novel. Notifications? No thanks. A weather app "should be fun"? Huge no thanks. Privacy and trust? Why do you collect any data?? Unbelievable.
There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.
One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.
I only have one Apple devices (an iPad) but from what I seen the subscription is popular on it. I wanted to use Infuse, a video player, for my Jellyfin server but the lifetime price was $100 or a $2/month subscription. Also was interested in Panels, a comic book reader, for my Komga server. Panels was more reasonably priced ($20 for all updates to the current major version) but it also a subscription tier at $1.5/month.
Your phone comes with a free weather app. There are thousands more free apps for folks who don’t mind ads.
Weather requires ongoing costs. It’s always going to need to be maintained because meteorological models are evolving. Anything beyond a viewport will need to track and metabolize those changes.
I strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data, a negligible amount of IT infrastructure, and their employees. Considering that there are many free weather APIs, and that a polished frontend can be built by a single person, what exactly are the overheads?
To be fair, I'm not criticizing the subscription model. I think it makes sense for software that needs to be continually maintained. But a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment. A big reason why companies love the Apple ecosystem is because subscriptions have been normalized, and users are used to paying them regardless if the model actually makes sense for the type of software.
> strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data
No. But I'd suspect a tabula rasa approach to weather–particularly given it hasn't been rolled out globally in one go–incorporates satellite data, local measurements, et cetera.
Again, that may not take constant subscriprtion. But it does take constant expert monitoring and awareness.
> Considering that there are many free weather APIs
If you're a glorified viewport into these APIs' data, you may be able to stick with their most-static data and fire and forget. In reality, what those outputs mean change as the models and techniques evolve. There are new APIs with new data constantly coming out, and they're often adding connectors.
> a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment
The only way I see this working is if the user is explicitly aware the app can break at any time if one of the APIs change anything, which they often do, and that this may not cause any obvious failures, just a decay in the app's accuracy or usefulness.
How do you expect them to pay for their costs and service fees? One time payments of $1-$10 don't cut it. People aren't paying massive one time fees for mobile apps
Doesn't seem to be available in the EU. Yet another US-only app with US-only weather, I guess, like countless others…
"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.
Has EU weather sources per credits (DWD, ECMWF, EUMETSAT -- roughly what it's doing is graphing multiple models), but if you are into weather apps you're likely best off with Carrot that (a) lets you design your own UI including matching this (more or less), and (b) lets you choose among weather sources and flip among them with a tap.
If it's about cute UI and key notifications, try Hello Weather. For microcell notifications on anything, Tomorrow weather. For much better maps, WeatherMap.
For comparing multiple models, try Windy.app. For coastal barrier island use, I have 8 graphed at once, most of them EU models.
Very little reason for any weather app beyond Carrot, though Apple Weather is surprising evolved from the app of 20 years ago, no longer the 4th app to replace after messaging, maps, and browser).
Carrot is the only weather app with a vicious weather control AI singing an entire Broadway concept album about your destruction at you though.
Try your local weather app. Here in Switzerland the MeteoSwiss app is absolutely wonderful, and has all these main features:
Plus many more other features. I found Yr in Norway also good (and on the web you also get uncertainty in the 21 day forecast https://www.yr.no/en/21-day-forecast/1-305409/Norway/Troms/T...).Local weather services shouldn't be overlooked (and they're "free"... save for taxes!).
WarnWetter for Germany. Costs a symbolic 1 Euro for dumb reasons, but I think it's easily worth it.
yr.no tends to be most accurate for Scandi+Baltics somehow pretty often.
Ventusky has the best app experience in Android with many different layers like wind, precipitation, air quality and many more. Can only recommend this as well.
BreezyWeather is a pretty good open source option for Android, if you are looking. Gives you plenty of options of data providers to use.
https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather
Yeah, odd to show an example screenshot with France and Spain on the map if it's not available there...
I'm in Germany and I really enjoy the Norwegian weather app YR, it's nice and simple and very clean.
It looks nice. Less nice but very good in Germany is DWD Warn Weather:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/dwd-warnwetter/id986420993?l=e...
Yes. We pay for it with taxes! And again with our money in the App Store. But the app success is build upon the lawsuit from WetterOnline which is a private company.
https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
The lawsuit backfired and made the state funded app well known. WetterOnline attacked the DWD because the state funded app is superior :)
I think in Italy they have some similar app. Would be nice if the EU helps us to unify the app. And add offline capabilities, bad or no internet happens. The weather radar is offline of less use but the forecast still helps.
They release videos for dangerous weather on YouTube. We’ll know for regular people, in regular cloths, speaking like regular Germans. Everyone loves it :)
I like it when important services are provided by the state and private companies. Save foundation! In worst case the state is always better. In best case they compete and public benefits. In this case the private company just sucks. But they made a good job in advertising for DWD ^^
PS: If someone would implement a nice weather for Linux (best Gtk) based upon DWD public data? DO IT!
The site doesn’t make it clear, but it’s not available worldwide. The App Store doesn’t tell you where exactly it is available, but it’s not in the UK.
This surprised me seeing as one of the example images shows Europe, including the south coast of Britain.
Check out zoom.earth, found it recently. They have an app too.
https://zoom.earth/
Apparently it's by https://neave.com/ who looks like an indy developer out of london (according to this: https://neave.com/legal/privacy/)
Also check https://earth.nullschool.net/ by https://github.com/cambecc
We don't care about a Weather app. Very easy to do and there are millions of it. What is missing is good freely accessible data /api for weather info.
Most free one are disappearing and frustratingly in most countries, the weather agency you pay with your tax will not provide it for you.
Looks lovely. I was keen to try this but US and Canada only unfortunately.
Also: subscription fatigue is real. Of course I understand that fetching weather data isn’t free etc. (even though I’m intrigued by their homegrown forecast model) but I’ve already got 10+ subscriptions on iOS and I’m not sure if I’ve got the stomach for another. Apple’s weather app is finally good though since the Dark Sky acquisition.
How about reporting on yesterday's weather? Its hard to plan a walk in the forest today if I dont know how much it rained yesterday.
mentioned this elsewhere, but https://zoom.earth/ handles that ... (I've got nothing to do with them btw... I just think it's good)
I'm having this problem right now, trying to plan some nice long walks out of the city but it's been raining a lot lately. I'd love some kind of map of flooding/muddy conditions, but I don't think it would be feasible without a massive effort (as whether an area is prone to flooding or turning into a mudbath after rain depends on a lot of factors).
I can't download it, as it appears to be US only. Based on the screenshots, without 'feels like' support throughout the forecast (not just for current conditions) it wouldn't be useful where I live.
This team really have been thinking about weather a lot, and it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time.
It’s that depth of thought and expertise that feels missing from most of the vibe-coded launches we’ve seen recently. I actually wouldn’t mind if Acme had vibe coded parts, but I bet they didn’t.
> it makes me very curious about what they’ve created this time
The rainbow and sunset alerts are really cool ideas. I'm now realising that a simple tie-in to astronomical phenomena could prompt a useful notificationa around it e.g. being worth going stargazing that night. I ski–learning that the near-term forecasts just changed would help me change my schedule the day before versus trying and failing the morning of.
Is there really that much money in making a weather app where you can quit your job at apple and do that?
Funniest thing is how they leave the company they sold their weather app to... to start another weather app.
They sold their last weather app to Apple for like, tens of millions or something. These aren’t some random Apple employees.
Also, it seems a common misunderstanding about some weather apps: yes, most of them just package free data and steal your privacy, but some are really much more than a “weather app”. Some are attempts at building next-generation weather forecast models, which if successful are of course worth billions.
I’ve spent a lot of time building innovative weather apps, most of my career actually. And it’s always shocking to me when people say I’m wasting time or wasting my life or look at me like, “really? You’re dedicating your life to weather apps?!”
No dawg, I’m trying to improve short term forecasts to save life and property from severe events at scale!
I’m not sure what the Acme end goal is, but surely this isn’t just a “weather app”.
> I’m trying [...] to save life and property from severe events at scale
Tell me you work in Silicon Valley without telling me you work in silicon Valley.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. There is something in US startup mentality where you can't just "create an app and make a living", you have to be on a grand mission to save the world. That may be normal out there, but for the rest of the world it just seems... Get back to earth man :-)
Sure, most of us are doing nothing to help people and are using grandiose language to describe reticulating splines. I don’t think that applies to good weather apps though, a lot of people do die because they are unaware of weather events. I would be very unsurprised to learn that any major weather app has directly saved lives. The U.S is a very… weatherful place.
People do die due to weather events. But attributing their death to bad weather apps is pretty wild.
It‘s exactly the kind of words that venture capital wants to here.
I used to use DarkSky for the "history data" for my platform. Querying weather for certain points in the past at certain locations. DarkSky was great for that until they were bought by Apple. Now I am using VisualCrossing for historical data. Hope Acme plans to do historical data too. But if it is US only then it is a no-go anyway.
Smells heavily like the Wunderlist approach, just re-do and re-sell the same thing over and over.
I am going to chalk this up as another datapoint in the "Apple cannot retain talent" chart. I don't know what the heck they are doing, but everyone they've acquired seems to leave as soon as they can instead of staying.
Leave as soon as you can, along with millions and millions in cash that you got from the sale? Who wouldn't?! Why would you continue working for "the man" when you have FU-money?
Should probably quit and sell the same thing again with a different chart because FU money isn't enough.
The price is reasonable I guess, but also, you can just get weather for free? IDK...
I'd love to see some stats on this: people leaving to start something new (be it Apple or any other acquiring company) might be over-represent because there is not much news about people staying in their job
How are weather apps still relevant, let alone profitable enough to build a company around? This problem has been solved years ago. All the app needs to do is hook up to one or more data providers, and show some stats and pretty graphs. It's essentially a read-only frontend to an API. There are plenty of options to choose from on every platform, including not using an app at all.
The features this ad promotes all seem like solutions to nonexistent problems. "Alternate possible futures" don't give me any more confidence in the forecast—it just shows that it's not reliable, which everyone should know already. "Community reports" just add another layer of uncertainty. How can I trust that someone's report is valid or up-to-date, or that it applies to my area? Maps are nice and visually interesting, but this is not exactly novel. Notifications? No thanks. A weather app "should be fun"? Huge no thanks. Privacy and trust? Why do you collect any data?? Unbelievable.
> Why do you collect any data??
There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.
One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.
Interested, but no android app and apparently US only?
Can we update the title?
Subscription app in 2026, no thanks.
I only have one Apple devices (an iPad) but from what I seen the subscription is popular on it. I wanted to use Infuse, a video player, for my Jellyfin server but the lifetime price was $100 or a $2/month subscription. Also was interested in Panels, a comic book reader, for my Komga server. Panels was more reasonably priced ($20 for all updates to the current major version) but it also a subscription tier at $1.5/month.
Your phone comes with a free weather app. There are thousands more free apps for folks who don’t mind ads.
Weather requires ongoing costs. It’s always going to need to be maintained because meteorological models are evolving. Anything beyond a viewport will need to track and metabolize those changes.
> Weather requires ongoing costs.
I strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data, a negligible amount of IT infrastructure, and their employees. Considering that there are many free weather APIs, and that a polished frontend can be built by a single person, what exactly are the overheads?
To be fair, I'm not criticizing the subscription model. I think it makes sense for software that needs to be continually maintained. But a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment. A big reason why companies love the Apple ecosystem is because subscriptions have been normalized, and users are used to paying them regardless if the model actually makes sense for the type of software.
> strongly doubt that this company runs their own weather stations or meteorological models. Their only recurring cost is API access to the companies that provide weather data
No. But I'd suspect a tabula rasa approach to weather–particularly given it hasn't been rolled out globally in one go–incorporates satellite data, local measurements, et cetera.
Again, that may not take constant subscriprtion. But it does take constant expert monitoring and awareness.
> Considering that there are many free weather APIs
If you're a glorified viewport into these APIs' data, you may be able to stick with their most-static data and fire and forget. In reality, what those outputs mean change as the models and techniques evolve. There are new APIs with new data constantly coming out, and they're often adding connectors.
> a weather app shouldn't have large maintenance costs that couldn't be covered by a one-time payment
The only way I see this working is if the user is explicitly aware the app can break at any time if one of the APIs change anything, which they often do, and that this may not cause any obvious failures, just a decay in the app's accuracy or usefulness.
How do you expect them to pay for their costs and service fees? One time payments of $1-$10 don't cut it. People aren't paying massive one time fees for mobile apps