On the app side, what's the best (global) app for rain forecasting over the next few hours (paid or not)?

Here in the Netherlands everyone uses "buienradar" which is limited to the Netherlands, has very bad privacy, and is also not super great at predicting rainfall.

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counters 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It depends where you are in the world. The general solution involve an app that provides two types of forecast products: (1) a short-range, high-resolution numerical weather forecast over your country / domain of interest, refreshed rapidly (about an hour or so) and providing forecasts out to about 24 hours; and (2) a radar-based nowcast which extrapolates very short-term (~2 hours out) forecasts solely for rain.

The limitations straightforward. For (1), very few countries have access to such a forecast system outside of the US and continental Europe, and virtually no private company runs comparable systems (at least in the B2C space). For (2), very few countries have high-quality doppler radar networks and make the output available for these applications.

There really isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, despite what the umpteen-gazillion weather apps on the Play Store or Apple Store will try to sell you.

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hhh 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Since moving to the Netherlands I have found it surprising how bad short term forecasting is here. In the US I would get a notification 15 minutes before it rained and it would almost always be accurate within 5 minutes, and a notification when it was going to stop. I don’t really understand why it is so much worse here in this regard.

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gHA5 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Have you considered whether this is because of the local weather tendencies? I visited the Netherlands once in summer near Amsterdam, and there were short bursts of rain frequently throughout the day. I'd imagine weather patterns like that are not well represented in global weather apps lowering the prediction accuracy in such regions.

	▲	lxgr a day ago \| parent [-]
		As far as I can tell, it's largely a data or modeling problem. Weather radars exist in most of Europe, including all of Western Europe. What's missing is somebody actually getting that data (which is not open in all countries) and feeding it into a short-term precipitation prediction model like Dark Sky (now Apple) does in a few regions. Currently, in regions where it's not available, I just do that manually: Look the rain radar data for the last hour or so and extrapolate linearly based on wind direction. You'll miss rain that's just starting or stopping or sudden changes in wind direction, but it's much better than what many apps offer.

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troupo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

wat.

There are apps like Buienradar that literally track and predict rain block by block with high accuracy.

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hhh 3 days ago | parent [-]

in my experience buienradar is never as accurate as whatever sauce the NWS provided that Apple uses for the weather app prediction in the US.

	▲	troupo 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Granted, I've only used it for a bit while in the Netherlands, and it was accurate to the block and to the minute. And every time when people would mention weather they would open the app to see if rain is coming in their particular location. I think it's due to peculiarity of Dutch weather: you could have rain literally 100 meters away from you, but not where you're standing. So usual "weather in the general region of where you are" are probably wildly inaccurate

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Sanzig 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you want to go overboard, there's NOAA's Global Forecast System.

https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/emc/pages/numerical_forecast_s...

Updated four times per day and has predictions out to about two weeks. It's used as the core input of most weather forecasts.

	▲	Catbert59 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		ECMWF also offers free forecast charts on their website. It's a bit more modern.

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Brajeshwar 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I visited Amsterdam, I was suggested Drops and it worked down to the minutes. I was like, wow! This is brilliant.

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/drops-with-rain-radar/id981543...

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joncrane 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I use weather underground in the Eastern US but I'd love to know if there's a better app.

I also use RadarScope but that's more to see the intensity of nearby rain cells and try to guess for myself their movement and evolution

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squaresmile 3 days ago | parent [-]

I find Accuweather MinutecastTM quite good for the Northeast. I'm using Breezy Weather with them as the data source. Sometimes, I found their API data was not as updated as their website/app but most of the time, the API is good enough. Can't stand their app design and data collection.

I know I know they are not nice, just repackaging NWS data blah blah but after testing all other rain prediction services, Accuweather was the most accurate for where I am.

Dark Sky was the best though. RIP

Apple Weather on iOS looks pretty good but I haven't found a good app consuming AW API on Android.

	▲	foobarian 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I find Accuweather radar UI pretty good for manual forecasting because I can grab the slider and rapidly move it back and forth to see a timelapse of the precipitation. It's amazing how often huge cells pass to either side of our little town (also in Northeast) without a single drop to our name.

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ricklamers 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I have found 'Buienalarm' to be more accurate in the Netherlands, not scientifically, just anecdotally