
ClimaCell Weather API: fully customizable hyper-local API - GeneloJ
https://www.climacell.co/weather-api/
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SiVal
This sounds as though it could be a nice replacement for the Dark Sky API that
Apple is going to lock us out of.

The ClimaCell API docs say the weather API offers forecasts for 1) realtime,
2) hourly, 3) nowcast, 4) daily

The free-tier pricing plan [1] apparently offers limited access to 1-3 but no
access to 4. That's too bad, but then no paid-tier plan offers 4, either. So,
I have to wonder, Am I missing something or are they?

[1] [https://www.climacell.co/weather-
api/pricing/](https://www.climacell.co/weather-api/pricing/)

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railerrudder
MyRadar has a drop-in replacement for the Dark Sky API

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TrueGeek
link? All I get for "MyRadar" is a mobile app.

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maxwellwhite
So I couldn't find it either, but this may be helpful to others after similar:
[https://www.programmableweb.com/category/weather/apis?catego...](https://www.programmableweb.com/category/weather/apis?category=20122)

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SeaDude
I used the ClimaCell api about a year ago as part of a POC and it was pretty
nice. The biggest feature for my use case was their granularity. The ability
to query the service using a point (lat/long) and have returned the specific
weather for that location was nice. All other services required two requests,
one to find the nearest weather station, another to query said station for
data. ClimaCells model predicts weather for locations where no forecast data
exists. I would recommend ground-truthing the forecasted vs actuals for the
modeled areas. Beyond their api, they have a pretty killer dashboard where you
can plot your assets and set geofences for weather alerts.

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ersimont
I use this for my little weather app:
[https://ersimont.github.io/weather](https://ersimont.github.io/weather)

I can compare it with 3 other APIs. I haven't been rigorous about it, but so
far I feel like it has been the most accurate for near-term forecasts.

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lowwave
Very nice. Just a few thoughts came to mind.

Where do you get the data? How is it different from
[https://openweathermap.org/api](https://openweathermap.org/api) ?

Are there APIs demo call that we developers can try?

Is there a cap limit, if so how much?

What are the pricing plans?

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hagsh
The original premise of ClimaCell as I understood when hearing about a few
years ago was to utilize cellular cells (hence ClimaCell) to acquire
information about the levels of humidity in the air, thus providing a cellular
cell level immediate forecast. I believe they have expanded that to satellite
communications and more.

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cryptoz
There is an enormous amount of latent weather data to be extracted from
existing sources and they, I think, are doing a great job finding and using
them.

I am also working on similar efforts, focused on using labelled photos of the
sky with ML to extract weather data from outdoor photos, and using barometers
in phones:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearweather.android)

I'm shocked there aren't more efforts in this space. I know IBM is using
barometers in phones now, and I suppose Apple may try that post-Dark Sky
acquisition, but I'm still surprised there aren't more!

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wlesieutre
PressureNET (now defunct) was the earliest crowdsourcing phone barometer
platform that I remember hearing about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressureNET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressureNET)

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cryptoz
Yeah, that one was me :) All Clear is my latest attempt. It's a hard nut to
crack.

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aritraghosh007
If you're going to sell an API, then please have a demo playground before
requiring dev signups. The proof lies in the pudding.

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mmm_grayons
There's a free tier with a thousand calls per day, which strikes me as plenty
for a personal/try-out tier.

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PostOnce
It's a hassle to sign up though; at least they could show me an example
weather forecast for some region so I could compare it to others before
bothering to play with their API... of course I won't bother if their
forecasts are no good.

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Abishek_Muthian
I've used Dark Sky API to plot temperature against COVID-19 cases[1], I found
its coverage to be better than other historical weather API.

But, there's need gap in all these weather API's; they lack actual recorded
historical weather data and provide only forecast data. Actual recorded
weather data is important for any research conducted with historical weather
data.

[1][https://abishekmuthian.com/covid-19-temperature-
correlation/](https://abishekmuthian.com/covid-19-temperature-correlation/)

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TrueGeek
I thought when you requested a historical date from DarkSky it was actual
data? To be clear - you are saying they are forecasting even in the past?

Is there no way to just download an archive of previous history of weather
data for a location?

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Abishek_Muthian
AFAIK actual recorded weather data is available only with individual country's
met dept and few international agencies like NOAA; but I wasn't able to get
recent global data from NOAA. Few private weather API provider like Weather
Underground which uses crowdfunded data using actual sensors but obviously
their global coverage is small.

I tried to use WU for my COVID data research and it didn't have data for the
Chinese cities.

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ShakataGaNai
Interesting concept, worth exploring. Except the documentation isn't very
good. In so far as there are examples provided, with my API key, that don't
work. If you're going to provide examples... test to see if they work. I don't
care if it provides me weather in Timbuktu, but it should work.

Error 400 - "location is not defined correctly".

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lalaithion
Your website is broken for anyone who browses in a width less than 1024
pixels; the higher tier pricing plans cease to be visible.

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mac01021
I still want confidence intervals.

Not that I'm their target customer anyway...

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sm4rk0
"Proprietary Data & Models" \- not sure if this is _pro_ or _con_.

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renewiltord
Awesome. Definitely room here now that DarkSky has vacated the premises.

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cryptoz
This should be far better than Dark Sky. AFAIK Dark Sky was far more of a
simpler statistics play than real meteorology and data processing. I was
surprised Apple bought them, because I don't honestly believe they had any
real groundbreaking tech, more slimy marketing than anything.

But ClimaCell is serious about new data being used, real forecast analysis,
and verification, etc.

The future of weather APIs and services is much brighter IMO, now that Dark
Sky is out of the picture.

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GekkePrutser
Correct, at least here in Europe Dark Sky was super low-res in terms of its
weather maps and predictions. As a result it was way off the mark. Especially
the rain map here in Spain. I think it was really focused on the US.

At the moment I use openweathermap but interested in better ones.

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__mp
Check out [https://www.meteomatics.com](https://www.meteomatics.com)

Available models can be found here:
[https://www.meteomatics.com/en/api/request/#model_selection](https://www.meteomatics.com/en/api/request/#model_selection)

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yencabulator
No pricing is an immediate turn-off. Best they seem to have is another
"Contact Us (and tell us how thick your wallet is)" button:
[https://www.meteomatics.com/en/eshop/](https://www.meteomatics.com/en/eshop/)

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cbsks
Is there a demo somewhere? I'd like to see what the forecast is for my
location before signing up for an API which I may or may not use..

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ersimont
You could try it in my weather app:
[https://ersimont.github.io/weather](https://ersimont.github.io/weather)

Select it from the "Source" section in the options.

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CallMeMarc
Nice tool! Are you paying for a plan or how are you using the hourly forecast?
[1]

[1]
[https://github.com/ersimont/weather/blob/master/src/app/sour...](https://github.com/ersimont/weather/blob/master/src/app/sources/climacell/climacell.harness.ts#L28)

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ersimont
Thanks! I am not paying for a plan, so the app is subject to their free quota.
That line of source you found is simply going through a little proxy I set up
to add my API key to the request.

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mmm_grayons
Oh nice, I have something else I can use for my terminal status bar now that
dark sky is dead. The free tier looks plenty generous for such a use case;
polling once every two minutes is just about right. Much appreciated!

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starpilot
Are NAM forecasts available or just GFS?

For historical data, can you get historical forecasts as well as actuals?

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ca_parody
They provide NAM, GFS, HERR, etc... they also have proprietary models (CBAM1 &
CBMA2 that are higher resolution)

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GekkePrutser
Sounds great! I hope there will soon be a plugin for Home Assistant for this
<3

