a human-readable interface to the Weather Underground Open Weather API
The core idea of the app is that humans don't experience weather as a set of numbers. "54 degrees Fahrenheit, winds blowing from the SW at 6mph, 12% chance of rain" is not a good fit for our intuitive mental models of the weather. When someone asks "what's the weather like?", I think what they want to know can be boiled down to:
- Is is hot or cold outside?
- Is the sky doing anything interesting?
In other words, you probably don't care about "88 degrees F" just because you really like 88 as a number of degrees, but because you can mentally transform it into "temperature: hot".
If you need proof, look at how we describe weather to other people:
It's really hot
It's freezing
It's nice out
It's super windy
It's pouring rain
I saw some lightning
We intuitively conceptualize weather as a general temperature or a set of vague atmospheric conditions. And when we get the weather from people instead of machines, we don't look for numbers or data points. We look for feelings.
So that's what this app provides.