Credit: Climendo
The wait for a truly accurate weather forecast could finally be over thanks to a nifty new app. Climendo compares and combines data from 10,000 stations to provide users with the most precise forecast possible. The gadget displays on your phone a five-day forecast with six-hourly predictions of forthcoming weather, which is supplied by 12 providers located across America and Europe.
Developed by Swedish surfer brothers David and Jacob von Corswant, the app has just been re-released with a new interface. “Now Climendo is able to work globally and hundreds of times better as a tool, including more places, for example South America,” David told Metro.
There are countless weather apps out there, so why did you want to make another one?
My brother Jacob and I have been surfing in Sweden for the past 20 years. The cold and relatively small Baltic Sea doesn’t create big swells, so in order to get surfable waves we depend on heavy winds. We have always looked at every available weather forecast to find the right conditions. But it was hard since different forecasters predict different weather. We never really knew for sure if it would be worth to get up early in the morning and take a long drive to hopefully find surf. So we figured there had to be an easier way to do this. That’s how Climendo was born.
How does the app work?
We are constantly saving forecasts and comparing those to actual observation data from professional weather stations around the world. By doing that, we can calculate a percentage of accuracy of all forecasters for most cities or areas. This information is presented in the app and shows the most accurate forecaster for the past week. Soon we will also add a feature where you can see the actual percentage number within the app.
Where has been the most challenging to predict the weather?
At the moment, we don’t know. But we see large daily differences in, for example, temperature for many cities around the world. The difference can be as much as up to 15 degrees Celsius. Will it be -5 degrees, or +10? Quite a big difference to most people.
How accurate is accurate when it comes to forecasts, in your view?
The accuracy vary much for the different providers, and for different cities, regions and countries. It is very hard to say a general percentage. We are aiming to become the most accurate one on a global level, just as we were in our test market Sweden last year. But it is too early to say how accurate we are since we are still fine tuning the service to perfection.
