search

martykan / forecastie

A simple, opensource weather app for Android.
Other
867 stars 335 forks source link

Feature Request: Projected Snowfall #662

Open Noctudeit opened 2 years ago

Noctudeit commented 2 years ago

I'm not sure if this is possible with the OWM API, but it would be useful to get projected snowfall either by day or for the next 24 hours.

robinpaulson commented 2 years ago

From what I recall, Forecastie already does this. The "rainfall" should be named "precipitation" and shows either snow or rain, whichever is forecast to fall.

Noctudeit commented 2 years ago

There are a few issues with that. First, as far as I know the app only shows rainfall in a graph format and the scale is completely ambiguous. How much time does each bar represent? Do I have to add the bars together to get the total or is it accumulative?

Also, snowfall is always much more than rain for a given amount of precipitation. The general rule of thumb is that a storm that would have produced 1" of rainfall will instead produce ~10" of snowfall. This conversion is simple if you are looking at a pure snowstorm, but often they start or end as rain or sleet making the conversion more complicated. Weather forecasters take all of that into account when projecting snowfall from a given storm.

robinpaulson commented 2 years ago

the scale is completely ambiguous

i presume you mean the x-axis? all forecasts in the app are shown at 3 hour intervals.

also, the blocks are labelled with the day, so they're not entirely ambiguous

robinpaulson commented 2 years ago

snowfall is always much more than rain for a given amount of precipitation

that makes sense, but doesn't change my answer. the graph will show whichever type of precipitation is predicted on the same scale. the app also provides text descriptions of the forecast weather, on the "main" screen

often they start or end as rain or sleet making the conversion more complicated

i don't have much experience of snow, this sounds reasonable though. i'm not sure how to respond, the API docs on the OWM site will have more info

robinpaulson commented 2 years ago

https://openweathermap.org/forecast5

look for the item named forecast.precipitation

Noctudeit commented 2 years ago

all forecasts in the app are shown at 3 hour intervals.

This is very helpful, thanks!

the app also provides text descriptions of the forecast weather, on the "main" screen

I have seen that, but it is unclear how far into the future that figure is projecting. But with the info above, I should be able to figure it out.

Thanks!

robinpaulson commented 2 years ago

5 days, at 3 hours. all forecasts in the app are that length, it's what the FLOSS subscription provides.