The Apple Weather app is beautiful. Its reliability? That’s hard to forecast
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say Apple’s Weather app is the most beautiful app the company has ever made. Its full-screen weather animation backdrops are nothing short of stunning. There have been times when I’ve spent an extra several seconds in the app simply gazing at the particulates flowing across my screen in the breezy animation or at the flakes every so gently falling in the snow animation. But unfortunately, that’s where my love affair with Apple Weather ends.
One of the reasons for this is that I’ve lost trust in the weather data the app is showing me. Sometimes the forecast is spot on, and sometimes it’s so wildly off, it’s comical. Then, of course, there are some small gripes I have with the way Weather displays data (accurate or not) and the fact that Apple Weather data has been unavailable for long stretches a lot this year, making it at times impossible to get current conditions.
But let’s look at these issues one at a time.
If Apple Weather says it’ll be sunny, there’s a chance it will pour
The biggest issue that I and many others have had with Apple Weather in 2023 is that it can be hard to trust the data. There are times when the information it presents is not just off, but the opposite of real-world conditions at that very moment.
For example, when I was on vacation earlier this year, one of the first things I did when I checked into my hotel was look at the forecast for the city I’d arrived in. Apple Weather predicted nothing but sunshine for the remainder of the day. Eager to explore, I went out the door, leaving my umbrella behind. Within 10 minutes, the drizzle started. Ten minutes after that I was caught in a downpour of such magnitude I started to wonder if I should build an ark. Yet, when I looked at the Apple Weather app while taking shelter under an awning, the real-time forecast said the skies at my location were cloudless and sunny.
This false forecast appeared for three days in a row. Each day Apple Weather said it was going to be sunny, yet each day it rained—or poured. And this wasn’t just an incident unique to me.
Apple Weather seems to have an issue with precipitation, in particular—and not just what’s happening at the moment or in the future. As many have reported on Twitter, Apple Weather frequently shows incorrect participation levels for the past.
Now, it’s hard to know if this is a problem that Apple is directly responsible for, or if it’s the fault of some of the third-party weather data sources from which Apple obtains its weather data. Some people have pointed out on social media that Apple’s weather data seems to be pretty accurate in North America, Western Europe, and parts of East Asia, but its accuracy in other geographic areas can be a coin toss.
What I do know is that Dark Sky, which Apple acquired in 2020 and then shut down in 2023, was virtually always accurate when it came to precipitation—past, present, or future. Apple says that “Dark Sky’s features have been integrated into Apple Weather”—but to many users, that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least when it comes to reliably forecasting precipitation.
Apple Weather’s UI navigation is blowing in different directions
Incorrect data aside, there are other issues with the Apple Weather app that need to be addressed. While the app’s animations are beautiful, the dashboard layout that Apple uses to present weather data leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m particularly talking about the way the Apple Weather app displays hourly weather data. While you can get the 10-day forecast and some current statistics easily by scrolling up or down, you must navigate the hourly forecast by scrolling left to right. This abrupt change in the direction of navigation is incongruous with the user experience in the rest of the app. And since you navigate to other saved locations in the Apple Weather app by swiping left to right, you can inadvertently scroll to another location when you’re simply trying to see the rest of the hour-by-hour forecast at your current location.
It’s odd that Apple chose to go this route, since Dark Sky was praised for its intuitive UI, which let users simply scroll down to see the hour-by-hour forecast (see Fast Company’s breakdown of the Apple Weather versus Dark Sky UI here for more context).
C’mon with the radar glitches
Meanwhile, many have noted that sometimes the Weather app won’t display visual data accurately. This is most often noticed when radar images of participation fail to load, as seen in the screenshot of the tweet below.
If someone has gone through all the steps to get to this window, they’re acutely interested in seeing, say, how quickly a storm will pass overhead. To have an entire field blocked out at the moment someone really needs it is infuriating. This never happened with Dark Sky.
Apple Weather data can simply fail to update
A final issue with Apple Weather is one that’s happened a lot this year: Sometimes the app just fails to load updated data. There have been dozens of instances when Apple Weather users went hours without being able to update data on their iPhone. And as MacRumors notes, Apple Weather seemed to undergo two significant and widespread outages in April and May, where no data at all loaded for users.
These complete data outages seem to have subsided, but to this day, I’ll still notice several times a week that Apple Weather is failing to load updated data.
What’s the forecast for Apple Weather?
If Apple’s Weather app has become too unreliable or unwieldy for you, the only option you have is to jump ship to another weather app. Dark Sky is never coming back (sigh), and Apple, three and a half years after acquiring it, shows no signs of infusing Apple Weather with the pinpoint accuracy and usability that made Dark Sky users love it so much (to the point that they paid for it). If you decamp, you’ll lose the beautiful skin that Apple Weather wraps its data in, but the accuracy of the forecast is more important than how it looks.
For now, I’ll be sticking with Apple Weather, hoping that these data issues and UI inconveniences are nothing more than growing pains.
I’ll also be using the “Report an Issue” feature more often—the big button at the bottom of Apple Weather pages that allows users to report in detail when the weather forecast for their location is incorrect. Here’s hoping Apple Weather addresses these issues soon. No one likes a weather app when its accuracy is hard to predict.
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