An Ode to Weather App Dark Sky
Using just handful of data points, it makes lovely and useful only what you need to know about the weather right now.
Growing up, I had the power to know the future. That’s what it felt like to dial seven digits from our kitchen rotary phone and get the daily and weekly weather report. Those pre-recorded weather messages felt like fortune tellers, helping me plan to navigate the outside world.
Weather is with us wherever we go, yet there are few things more taken for granted and more influential. Not until it is remarkable, an interruption, or a threat, do we notice. Often we’re too busy, shoulders hunched over our current state, to look up and consider its magnitude and ubiquity.
But perhaps a small tech team is changing that. Dark Sky, a weather app for iOS and Android, debuted in 2011 with a strong point of view, helping humans see that weather is not only a science but an art and a wonder. Originally conceived by cofounders Adam Grossman and Jack Turner as a simple rain forecaster, the app accurately predicts when and for how long it will precipitate in your current location. Providing up-to-the-minute alerts, it builds trust by delivering you the immediate future, rather than telling you the probability that an event might happen.
“Rain starting in 2 minutes!” it informs you while you go about your day, so you can prepare accordingly. If no precipitation is expected in your area, it recommends viewing a livelier and more dramatic weather location, suggesting that different weather conditions are to be celebrated, even if they aren’t nearby.
What’s remarkable about Dark Sky, however, is what it is not. It does not have ads. It does not have weather news. It does not sensationalize storms. It does not share a point of view about climate change. The next hour’s weather is displayed only if there’s something to know. Even the upcoming week is a swipe away. Using just a handful of data points, it makes lovely and useful what we need to be aware of now. Both the app and the website have situational awareness, revealing only what is contextually relevant.
Most thrilling is the 3D map view of the world, where you can spin the tiny globe and view it through two simple data points: temperature and precipitation. And it’s sort of immediately clear that — no matter our differences in geography or race or religion or climate — these two data sets connect us all.
Dark Sky is not so much an app and a website, but rather a life companion. It’s all we really expect of our closest companions, anyway — that they represent a different perspective from ours, they are situationally aware, they support us each day, and they share with us the beauty and wonder of the world. Dark Sky does that and more. And to know it is to have the power of the future — minus the rotary phone.
