The app is Clime Pro on iOS, they lock full access to Hurricane Milton data behind a $10 USD per week paywall.
If you’re in the area impacted by Milton, you can find publicly available resources at the National Hurricane Center’s website: National Hurricane Center
There is nothing more tech-bro libertarian than taking free public data, wrapping it in a slick package, and selling it.
I used to think that TV weather people were obsolete, but now I’m nostalgic for the public service that survived in the old capitalistic ad based broadcast TV era.
To be fair, free broadcast tv and radio is still a thing, and they are an integral part of the US’s disaster alert system. With the right equipment (read: basic cheap radio available almost everywhere), you can still listen to weather information (both general and severe) directly from the horse’s mouth 24/7 for free.
In a disaster situation, these services will still stand because they require less infrastructure per person reached than is required to deliver high-speed internet to the same number of people.
These services still exist, and will continue to, but the knowledge of them has atrophyed from disuse. They won’t go away, they’ve just been replaced in general usage because of the convenience that the internet provides us.
TL;DR: Get you a weather radio, get free weather for the life of the equipment. Even if it’s not your daily driver, get one anyways, because you’ll be able to hear the most relevant info in the worst situation.
I have a weather radio. Every time I turn it on during an intense storm, it gives me very little useful information. It tells me something like “a tornado has been sited in your area [without defining what that means], seek shelter immediately.” After the last massive storm ended where so many fallen trees destroyed homes, took out power lines, made roads impassable, etc. and the cell network was getting jammed by so many users, do you know what information the two local TV stations and the local radio stations were offering?
Fuck. All.
But hey, one of the two TV stations did relay the fact that the state had made a disaster declaration half a day after the declaration was made.
Those services exist, but they’re almost useless.
In a hypothetical world where everyone has every comfort available and every need met,
in that world at least,
I could say:
“There is some room for wrapping something in a sleek package!“
(Maybe I’d pay a dollar if someone remade those graphs really beautifully)
I only ever check my weather on NWS, but a year or two ago they went from having easily read hourly forecast data to those obnoxious graphs. I have zero clue why they did that.
If you click on the graph, it’ll turn into a data table showing ~48 hours worth of information. Is that what you’re looking for?
Meteorologists do those graphs. What do you expect. Having set through more than one lecture by NOAA person for certification as a weather watch person as a firefighter. They love graphs and photos of clouds. Sooooo many photos of clouds…
Still, they are easy enough to read once you get used to them.
Even AccuWeather is saying they’re going too far now.
They realize they need that government data too.
Project 2025 wants to disband NOAA and give its functions to Accuweather instead, directing taxpayer funding to a private company while also locking all weather data behind a paywall, so they get paid twice to provide the same info NOAA currently provides with a single payment (taxpayer funding). The Accuweather founder, Joel Myers, and his brother, Billy Lee Myers (unsuccessfully nominated by Trump to be the head of NOAA), are major Republican donors, but I’m sure that is completely coincidental.
Weather.gov had the front page downgraded during the Trump administration.
However, if you take a second and put in your ZIP Code and poke around some, it is really freaking good.
And it’s free.
Aww man, that was my go-to weather app. Anybody have FOSS suggestions for android?
I don’t know about apps, but they ultimately all get it from the National Weather Service. Since it’s a government service, the website is totally free of ads and other garbage. Just use that. Weather.gov. You can search for your home, and since it uses absolute URLs, you can then bookmark the results page and just go straight to that every time.
My CalyxOS came pre-installed with Breezy Weather
Throwing it out there, but https://www.nhc.noaa.gov is hands down the best hurricane tracking site. It’s low Bandwidth, quick, lightweight, legit data backed, and generally the source data for most other weather sites.
nhc.noaa.gov is the best for quick, up to date official info about expected impacts. Also local county and municipality pages are important to check for evacuation orders and routes.
For anyone who wants technical deep dives into the meteorology of tropical storms, I can’t recommend www.tropicaltidbits.com enough.
It’s shitfunny because this is a perfect opportunity for apps like this to play into Capitalism and succeed twentyfold.
Open up the app to everyone for free during the hurricane, remove that after hurricane. So many people will go:
- “OMG this app is useful, I’m paying”
- “OMG that company is so kind, I’m paying”
- “OMG I didn’t even know about this but people spread the word, I’m paying!”
So many opportunities for longer-term profits missed by idiocy.
What data does this app have that isn’t freely available somewhere else?
Yep. Hurricane info is available from official sources for free.
However, I can’t help but imagine some tiktok of someone finding themselves trapped on a rooftop crying because their preferred app wouldn’t show some critical info.
For anyone who doesn’t know where here’s NOAA. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/093335.shtml?cone They’re who does America’s atmospheric and oceanic measurements, everyone selling it gets it from them
I’m pretty sure somebody who died because they didn’t made sure to check freely available information beforehand given the very loud and widespread advanced notices that “serious shit might be coming your way” counts as Natural Selection.
