Visit Yorecast

Yorecast is a weather PWA that places emphasis on relative temperature.

Why relative? Well, Einstein was a proponent of this little theory of relativity, but unfortunately hasn’t lived long enough to be able to create weather apps. So, I did it for him.

In all seriousness, Yorecast is a tool I use to decide what to wear in the morning. I typically don’t remember what the exact temperature was yesterday, but I do remember what I wore, and if I was too cold or hot wearing it. However, most weather apps don’t let you see yesterday’s weather, so I made one that does.

I typically don’t remember what the exact temperature was yesterday, but I do remember what I wore.

Yorecast tells you if it’s warmer or colder than yesterday, and by how much, so you can make an informed decision about what to wear.

Not only does it show yesterday’s weather, but it uses a color-coded chart fill to illustrate if it’s warmer or colder for any given hour compared to the temperature at the same time yesterday. It’s a simple concept, but it’s a game changer.

You can view and use the app here.

Remember, it’s a PWA, so you can “install” it on your phone by adding it to your Home Screen!

The inspiration

I won’t take credit for the idea. There are other apps that tell you if it’s “colder” or “warmer” than yesterday, and any good weather channel meteorologist will tell you what it’ll be like compared to yesterday.

I almost found a project that does exactly what I want, but it’s more of a tech demo, rather than a full-fledged app. So, I made my own.

ps: Apple added the ability to view yesterday’s temperature graph to the iOS 17 weather app. I’m not saying they stole my idea, but I’m not not saying that either.

Update sometime after 10-??-2023

Since I need to pull yesterday’s hourly weather, this means I sometimes need to make a second “historical” request. Pirateweather has had this functionality for a while. Long story short, historical weather calls are now prohibitively slow (varying from 7 to over 30 seconds). For now, this provider has been disabled. See here.

Update 12-13-2024

WeatherAPI dropped support for the use of its api through rapid-api. I had to tweak the weather calls to use WeatherAPI.com directly.

Pro tip: Try not to use RapidAPI!
Unless you absolutely need its built-in analytics, try going direct to the source. Anecdotally, it’s less reliable (api schema changes, pricing changes) than straight from source apis.