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Good question! It's the same underlying models, but three key differences: 1. Pirate Weather returns data following the Dark Sky syntax, as opposed to the custo
by alexander0042 4y ago
Good question! It's the same underlying models, but three key differences:
1. Pirate Weather returns data following the Dark Sky syntax, as opposed to the custom NWS format.
2. Pirate Weather has global coverage, the NWS API is only for the US.
3. The NWS one uses human forecasters to come up with their forecasts, compared to Pirate Weather's use of raw model results.
- earthscienceman 4y agoOnly on HN would the NWS format be described as 'custom'.
- hnarn 4y agoI know literally nothing about weather data standardization, but if the format was — for the sake of argument — unique to the US for example and another more popular format was used either internationally or de-facto by third parties, I’d say it qualifies as a “custom” format.
- earthscienceman 4y agoQuite the opposite. It's literally the global format that nearly everyone in the world provides data in.
- vermilingua 4y agoOnly in the US would you assume your govt's format is 'default'.
- tjohns 4y agoI think the implication was more that any government meteorological office's format is the default over a small private company. Especially since this API is repackaging output from the NWS's GFS model output.
- earthscienceman 4y agoYeah. And the follow up snark comment about it being an American thing. It is literally the file format specified for this type of data, globally. As outlined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) decades ago. It's widely supported and parseable. Making a web API that parses GRIB data is trivial. It's not some esoteric thing. You can open the files in python on any modern computer+OS.
- seb1204 4y agoSo what is different or better in the Dark Sky syntax?