
End of Service for the Weather Underground API - woodruffw
https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/end-of-service-for-the-weather-underground-api
======
CommieBobDole
I don't know what the internal situation is with WU, but I have to wonder if
they're not really a going concern within TWC anymore. Between their terrible
site redesign a few years back that just sort of stopped once it got to about
75% functional, and the way they seem to disable features whenever they start
requiring a little more effort to support, it feels like there's maybe one or
two people working on the site in their spare time trying to keep the lights
on.

It's a shame because their forecast graph is quite possibly the best weather
visualization ever - at a glance, I can see what the whole day is likely to
look like. I will miss it when they inevitably discontinue it.

Edit: In fairness, I just visited the site for the first time in a while and
it looks like they finally fixed their weather map - for at least several
years after the redesign was "complete", the default view for the weather map
would load so many weather stations it would grind pretty much any browser on
any machine to a halt. Looks like that's no longer the case, so maybe
something is still going on over there.

~~~
forapurpose
> terrible site redesign a few years back

Their 10-day weather graph is one of my favorite interfaces. There is no
better way to grasp the weather, and it transformed my conception of daily
weather patterns. Try it:

[https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/san-
francisco](https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/san-francisco)

Don't overlook the Customize button at the top right.

~~~
jcurbo
I completely agree, as a long term WU user I am continually frustrated by
their newer site design. The 10-day view is my favorite one but their site
reliability and speed are atrocious. Like others in this thread I've been
wondering what's going on over there and if they are just going to shut down
some day. I used to even have my weather station send data to WU but I stopped
doing that because I don't see any value in doing it anymore because their
site sucks. Wundermap is slow as well and I've had issues with their iOS app
lately too.

I would love to hear what people are using as alternatives. I already use Dark
Sky on iOS as well, so that's one. I just want a good 10 day view :(

~~~
dhimes
ublock origin won't let me load the page. I'm blocking kampyle,
scorecardresearch and newrelic

~~~
dhimes
^^Nope. It just took _forever_ to load.

------
profsnuggles
Fun thing about wunderground they are still running a telnet server. I've been
using it forever with some bash aliases.

alias wu='telnet rainmaker.wunderground.com'

alias weather='(sleep 0.5; echo "\n"; sleep 0.5; echo "EWR\n"; sleep 1; echo
"x\n") | wu'

~~~
latentpot
High chances no bluey person is even aware this exists, let alone find the
physical location of this system.

------
ihuman
> We realized we needed to make changes to ensure the highest level of
> quality, performance and uptime for our API users. As a result, we’ve made
> the difficult decision to retire the Weather Underground API.

Wait what? They weren't satisfied with the API, so they decided to end it
instead of fixing it?

I pay for an app that has the option to use WU's API (Carrot Weather), so I'm
upset by this. I've found their current weather and predictions to be more
accurate than Dark Sky.

~~~
ryandrake
That quote is bizarre corporate-speak. It sounds like “We would need to change
our product to make it perfect. So instead we’re going to kill it.” It doesn’t
make sense.

~~~
Bartweiss
Surprisingly, I think it means exactly what it says: accessing WU through the
API was flaky and unreliable, with lots of downtime. It sucks to maintain as-
is, and they can't be bothered fixing it, so they're killing it off.

(Of course, it was a unique data source, and still better than actually using
their actual site, so this is a nasty bit of corporate indifference.)

~~~
Nullabillity
In what world is 100% broken better than 95% broken?

~~~
rtkwe
For the users of that data none. For them the one where 95% broken was a pain
to maintain and wasn't bringing in much money. "We realized we needed ... for
our API users" is meaningless pretty much every decision gets some
justification where it's somehow better for the users but it's just a thin
enamel over whatever real business justification there is 95% of the time.

------
acomjean
So now I'm confused by this. On one hand they say they are retiring it, then
they say "For developers who use WU API data for non-commercial purposes, you
will have access to a new plan for a personal use, low call volume API. Stay
tuned for more details as we build this out."

Being a user this lack of clarity is annoying (a free one, but my previous
company paid for the service.)

I learned how to the api it 5 years ago while working at a start up when they
needed weather to normalize data. It was pretty easy to use and the price was
decent.

I got a free developer account and get the weather at my location every hour
with their free developer api..

The site compares the last 90 days vs last year so as a New Englander I can be
sure when complaining about the weather that it was in fact better last
year.[1]

[http://aramcomjean.com/weather.html](http://aramcomjean.com/weather.html)

[http://www.weather.gov](http://www.weather.gov) for ad free! day to day
forecasting needs.

------
dvcrn
Ouch, I loved weather underground. What's a good alternative then?

I loved that I could just use the weather station down the street and always
had very accurate weather predictions. When it says it rains, it actually
rains right where I am, unlike other weather services.

Also curious to see what CARROT Weather will replace it with.

~~~
TrueDuality
I've personally been using darksky.net recently for my personal weather
checking. It doesn't use personal weather stations, and there isn't a free
programmatic API so it definitely isn't a replacement. I've been looking for a
while and I haven't found something that fills the niche that was wunderground
in its hay day.

~~~
meej
This is what the developers I know have been doing as well.

Ambient Weather has been moving into the PWS data space. They have released
their own smartphone apps and they have an API:
[https://www.ambientweather.com/api.html](https://www.ambientweather.com/api.html)

------
makerofspoons
I have a small open-source project that uses their API and they certainly
never got in touch with me.

~~~
arkitaip
“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked
filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
‘Beware of the Leopard.”

------
fenwick67
Weather underground has fallen so far.

------
mrashes
This is really a bummer. I enjoyed the Wunderground API a lot, luckily there
are other options for weather.

As more people train as developers, will we see less exposure of data due to
infrastructure issues?

~~~
magduf
We see less exposure of data because it's more profitable to push people to
use proprietary apps that either cost money or are infested with annoying ads.
This is why screen-scraping exists and is so popular, despite all the calls
from nay-sayers who scream "don't screen-scrape! use the API instead!"

------
pilif
What a shame. Carrot Weather is by far my favorite weather app ever, but here
in Europe, its forecast is useless unless you pay extra to get the weather
underground data. Then it’s in-line with what all other local weather
forecasts produce.

I assume with the API going away so will carrot weather's access to weather
underground.

------
brobdingnagians
I have a client who had me start a project 5 years ago to create a new product
line; we integrated some weather API into it years ago and I couldn't remember
who we used, but I just checked and it turns out that it is
Wunderground.com--- but the lucky part is that the product is still unreleased
due to scope creep, bad specifications, and horrendous delays. So I guess this
is just one more delay to re-implement the weather functionality. You know
there's trouble when your APIs start dropping off like this... We probably
won't be finished for a long time yet anyways! I wonder what the next API to
close will be...

------
vanadium
I remember helping the WU team as a PWS operator since about 2007, and I found
the existing XML feeds lacking back then. I gave them some new data models to
implement for the XML feeds, and they were thoroughly open and awesome for the
help from a PWS owner. Ended up a Lifetime member.

Definitely haven't been the same in the last 3-4 years, though. In the last 6
months, even the platform has become a bit touch and go.

------
haywirez
Anybody knows a good, worldwide weather "niceness" rating API with a free
tier? The only scoring system I found was the Hugo Poppe method[0], but seems
like I'd have to implement it myself.

[0] [http://www.meteovista.com/weather-
rating/2971/0](http://www.meteovista.com/weather-rating/2971/0)

------
esaym
What does this mean really? I was just going to buy a PWS for my grandpa for
christmas. Actually, I was going to buy it for myself but figured I was only
going to view it via the 'wundermap' so might as well give the station and
console to him. Are they killing off access from PWS's or only how you can
retrieve the data?

~~~
jrnichols
I too am curious about this. A low priority project on my list at work was to
set up a weather station and add a weather feed on our public website, and i'm
now not sure where things are going.

another problem: there are now going to be SO MANY google results pointing to
some API/documentation/forum posts that aren't going to work anymore.

------
JustSomeNobody
Doesn't the National Weather Service (U.S.) have a free API? Is it just not as
full featured as WU's was?

~~~
CamperBob2
I wouldn't count on NWS surviving the Trump administration, for that matter.
There has been a strong push to privatize it going back to the Bush #43 era.

Edit: some suggested homework before downvoting:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-
s-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-pick-to-
lead-weather-agency-spent-30-years-fighting-it)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Ah, yes, the AccuWeather Protection Act. I do recall that.

------
dsd
What does it mean? They will retire the api but will make another one? Are
they planning to point PWS to other competitors? In what other ways was the
wunderground api providing services?

Side note- their site has been suffering performance issues for a long time.

Update: they edited their post.

------
LeoPanthera
This is going to break my irrigation controller:
[http://rainmachine.com](http://rainmachine.com)

Hopefully they can do a firmware update with a new data source.

------
cicloid
Are there alternatives for PWS? I liked how it provided better and more
localized information in comparison to official channels in Mexico

~~~
kevin_b_er
You can pay IBM Enterprise Pricing for that data now.

------
moltar
Will Weather Undeground iOS app continue to work?

------
morpheuskafka
Interesting, this should be a boost for Dark Sky.

------
jacobsheehy
IBM did not handle this well. This official announcement is months late. The
API was abandoned months or years ago but they were still taking people's
money for it. When they finally cut off the payment form and removed their API
plans _without notice_ in the summer there was an uproar. It hurt me deeply,
making 1-2 months of dedicated work directly against this API to be useless.

Very bad decision-making and handling at IBM and I will not be supporting any
of their businesses in the future. It is not reliable and they shut down
without notice.

Funny timing this morning - I wrote about my experience with this API in my
Show HN a few hours ago, before I knew about this news:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18235812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18235812)

And another link for the lazy, the link to the WU community when we all
noticed that this wreck was happening:
[https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/weat...](https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/weather-
underground-api-changes)

\--

Edit: A side anecdote. The API was so bad (in terms of service uptime) that I
learned a lot about how to write retry logic for API calls on mobile. So many
calls would fail for various reasons. But randomly. So for each API call you
want to make, you should have 5-10 error cases to catch and then retry.
Eventually you'd get a successful call!

(I switched to the free US NWS / NOAA API for All Clear Weather. It is better
in performance but I miss a lot of the data available from WU, and the US-only
thing is a downer too. All Clear:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearweather.android))

~~~
js2
I didn't know IBM acquired WU from The Weather Channel three years ago:

[https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/weather-
underg...](https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/weather-underground-
bought-by-ibm.html)

~~~
calibas
They also own WU's biggest competitor, Weather.com.

~~~
jaxtellerSoA
Even with Watson they can't get the weather right.

~~~
sodosopa
Can't wait until Watson Weather Dominator Explorer for Commerce is released.
/s

