I stopped letting rain ruin my weekend after downloading this crowdsourced weather app

I knew something was up when I had to cancel yet another morning run because of the rain.

I’m a pretty prudent person, so I tend to check the weather the day before to make sure conditions suit whatever I have planned.

When I want fresh air and a bit of exercise, I take time the night before to confirm I’m not signing up to get drenched at 6:30 a.m.

My regular weather app had failed me four times in recent memory, and it didn’t end there.

I’d check it moments before leaving to decide between a coat or an umbrella, or between walking and driving, only to get caught out by the opposite happening minutes later.

That morning, I sat in bed staring at an app that said 0% precipitation while it rained cats and dogs outside, and I realized I needed more accuracy.

So I tested a few Google Weather alternatives and found one that gave me what I needed.

I realized that the weather app didn’t cover where I was

Appropriate for an airport run, but …

The first thing on my mind was why the app was so frequently wrong. I’d always assumed meteorology was a fairly trustworthy branch of science.

The weather ladies can’t be lying to us all, right?

With that in mind, I did a little research and found I was correct. Weather predictions are pretty accurate, but mostly where the readings are actually taken.

For many apps, that means they give you accurate conditions at a local airport rather than the surrounding areas the system lumps together.

In the common case where a storm front moves over your neighborhood before it reaches that airport, you get rained on even though the app gives the all-clear.

What I needed was an app checking the weather where I was, not somewhere sort of close by.

Weather Underground solves the issue in a novel way

Garden sensors to the rescue

Credit: Weather Underground

Weather Underground has been available on Android since 2011, and it was exactly what I needed.

It works by crowdsourcing meteorological data from a network of more than 250,000 private weather stations across the globe.

These are physical devices set up by individuals, usually in a garden or lawn, that measure temperature, humidity, pressure, rainfall, and wind speed and direction in that exact spot, then transmit it over Wi-Fi.

Some services offer tie-ins with this kind of hardware, but Weather Underground uses it as a primary data source, so you’re getting readings and predictions from much closer to home.

These stations also report far more often than the official instruments that update only every few hours.

My main concern with crowdsourced weather was accuracy. The hardware is solid, but what about human error?

Weather Underground runs the data through its BestForecast model, which cross-verifies station readings against multiple forecast models and localized data points to catch bad inputs.

So it works, and it works well, though I live in a dense urban area with a lot of weather enthusiasts nearby. In a more rural area, it might not be quite as effective.

Wundermap gives me the full picture

Planning trips with precision

Since I live in an urban area that plays well with Weather Underground, I get to use what is easily its most distinctive feature, Wundermap.

It’s an interactive map with stacks of interchangeable overlays, including Nexrad radar, NOAA satellite imagery, heat and temperature maps, rain accumulation, and pins for individual personal weather stations.

With it, I can check conditions and forecasts for the actual neighborhood I plan to be in at a given time. There’s no more guesswork when planning a picnic, since there’s a pin right by the park with real-time readings and updated predictions.

It’s also fun to sit and look at it sometimes. If anything here has made me want my own personal weather station, it’s wanting a pin of my own on the Wundermap.

It’s not perfect

Making the switch has downsides

There are a few limitations to Weather Underground, much as I’ve enjoyed it.

The thinner coverage in rural areas means less precise data for planning outdoor trips like camping or hiking, though I still found a handful of personal weather stations in the more wooded parts of the state.

There’s also a subscription fee. I liked the app enough to upgrade fairly quickly, but that doesn’t make it necessary. The free tier is ad-supported like most Android weather apps, and in my experience, the ads never got in the way of checking conditions.

The more compelling reason to upgrade is what you get. The paid plan stretches the hourly forecast from 10 days out to 15, and adds Smart Forecasts, where you set the conditions you want for an activity and the app tells you when to go. For the token fee, I find it worth it.

Why I’m keeping it

There’s no going back for me now. It’s been my go-to for almost a year, and it’s been a big improvement over waking up to rain after the local airport gave an all-clear the night before.

I check a node less than half a mile away and get accurate results far more consistently.

It’s nice when dry and 12°C actually means dry and 12°C, and it makes planning a lot easier.

I also feel reasonably confident the app will stay serviceable, since after a 2020 update broke many key features and tanked its rating, the company is unlikely to repeat that.

Now that the forecast comes from my own community, my umbrella stays by the door only when it should.