The Dark Sky app is now available
The weather wasn't exactly exciting at this moment. Here's the outlook for a place that was a bit more interesting (meteorologically) at the time.
The Dark Sky weather app -- from Troy-based developers Adam Grossman and Jack Turner (Jackadam) -- is now available in the iTunes Store. The app aims to provide people with very specific weather forecasts for the near future based on location.
The question Dark Sky tries to answer is not "Will it rain tomorrow?" but rather "Will it be raining here during the next hour?" It can help determine if there's enough time for a quick bike ride before a thunderstorm, or how long you have might have wait before you can walk from your office to your car without an umbrella. It can also just satisfy the curiosity of bored meteorology nerds.
Speaking of meteorology nerds, we've been playing around with the app for the last day or so, and it's been kind of fun -- if not always accurate. The radar pictures are super clear and easy to read. And it shows whether the precipitation expected will be heavy, medium or mild. The no-precipitation predictions have been pretty good, and it did signal accurately a few times that rain was approaching. It failed to predict one light sprinkling of rain. (To be fair, we were in a moving car -- and Adam Grossman says that kind of light precipitation can be difficult to detect. And in general, this kind of stuff is harder than it looks.)
If the weather isn't interesting where you are, you can watch storms anywhere in the country.
Dark Sky is available for newer versions of the iPhone (4 and 4s), iPod Touch, and iPad. It's $3.99.
Jackadam funded the development of DarkSky in part by raising more than $39k on Kickstarter back in November. In the process, the app snagged a bunch of media attention (example).
We're looking forward to playing with it more.
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Comments
Hopefully we'll see this come to Android sometime soon... it looks amazing and I'd love to support local developers!
... said Karl on Apr 25, 2012 at 5:51 PM | link
Looks cool, and would be very useful for cycling. The T-U's weather page used to include some very time-specific forecasts, and then that went away as far as I can tell. It matters to me WHEN it's going to warm up by 10 or 15 degrees, and most of the forecasts are just so vague as to be essentially useless.
... said Carl on Apr 25, 2012 at 5:54 PM | link
Just curious (not an insult by any means), how is this different than the weather channel ap? That offers radar & hour-by-hour forcasting based on location too. And it's free.
... said Betty Jones on Apr 25, 2012 at 9:34 PM | link
@Betty Jones. Rather than hour-by-hour this gives probabilities for rain for every minute in the next hour at your EXACT location. I think the Weather Channel app is a little more broad. Imagine if you were an event planner and you had 50 people outside and you knew that in 20 minutes the skies were going to open up right where you were. It would give you the ability to corral and change plans quickly without everyone getting wet or running around. As I understand it, it takes your location and then compares that with everything coming your way and estimated arrival times.
... said Paul C. on Apr 26, 2012 at 10:02 AM | link
Ourcast does the same thing and it's free.
... said Pike on Apr 26, 2012 at 10:59 AM | link
Nifty, but I haz a sad that it isn't available on Android platforms.
... said Gina on Apr 26, 2012 at 11:18 AM | link
@Pike: thanks, OurCast is indeed free and looks nice, the crowd-sourcing component on top of the prediction model is an interesting feature.
... said Cloudy on Apr 26, 2012 at 11:45 AM | link
if there are other similar free apps like this, what's the big deal? because it's local? every review i have read has said it's not particularly accurate, which renders it's "minute by minute" reporting moot.
ill stick with weather channel.
... said Chuckie on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:34 PM | link
A free, ugly, unusable app is not always (or ever) better than a pay (but inexpensive), nice-looking, usable app. Dark Sky looks nice and has a great, usable interface (from the videos I saw back when it got media attention). While $4 might be a little pricey for an app like this to move up the iTunes charts, I could see it doing really well for, like, 1.99.
... said Paul on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:46 PM | link
hi there they have planes too have a android version only problem is they have raised only $39,000 but for andorid version they need $45,000 soo they need $6,000 more dollers
... said james braselton on Apr 26, 2012 at 8:44 PM | link
hi there dark sky came in handy in ga with tropical storm
... said james braselton on May 28, 2012 at 8:25 PM | link