Adam Grossman February 16, 2026
Over the years it went through several iterations – including more than one major redesign – as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Ultimately, over time, it was acquired by Apple, where forecasts and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather.
We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we give up starting another weather company?
It’s simple: When looking at the landscape of countless weather apps, many of which are beloved, we found ourselves feeling dissatisfied. The more we talked to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did the same. And, of course, we remembered those days as a small junk shop.
So let’s try it again…
embracing uncertainty
Our biggest pet peeve with most weather apps is how they deal (or rather, don’t deal) with forecast uncertainty. It’s a simple fact that no weather forecast will ever be 100% reliable: weather is moody, changeable, and chaotic. Forecasts are often wrong.
It is important to understand this uncertainty in order to plan your day. Most weather apps will give you their best guess, leaving you to wonder how confident they really are, and what else might be going on instead. Will it really start raining at 9 am, or might it stop until the afternoon? Will it rain or snow? How confident are you? If you don’t know how much you can trust the forecast, or don’t know what other possibilities may arise, you can’t plan your day. Rather than pretend that we will always be right, Acme Weather embraces the idea that our forecast will sometimes be wrong. We address this uncertainty in several ways:
alternative possible future
Our domestic forecasts are produced using many different data sources, including numerical weather prediction models, satellite data, ground station observations, and radar data. Most of the time, our forecast will be a reliable source of information (it’s better than the forecast we have in Dark Sky). But, importantly, we complement the main forecast with a proliferation of alternative predictions. These are additional forecast lines that capture a range of alternative possible outcomes:
forecast showing multiple possible outcomes
This accomplishes a few things:
First, the spread of the lines provides a kind of intuition about how reliable the forecast is. Take the two predictions below. In the first, the focus is strictly on alternative predictions and the forecast can be considered robust and reliable. In the second, there is a significant spread, which is a sign that something is wrong and the forecast may change. It’s a call to action to check out other conditions or maps, or to come back to the app more often:
more reliable forecasting
a less reliable forecast
Over time, you develop an intuitive sense of how much you can really trust the forecast. After using it for the past six months, I never want to go back to a single forecast again!
Second, it just shows what else could happen. In what time frame can the storm occur? Will snowfall occur quickly, or could it be delayed and mostly rain? When the weather is changing rapidly, predictions may be less reliable. We’ll show you different possible futures, so you can get a better idea.
community reporting
Alternative forecasts are designed to help make better decisions from hour-to-hour or day-to-day. Community reports are intended to help with real-time weather events. Current conditions during storms often evolve rapidly, radar is imperfect and may fail to detect precipitation during light rain, snow versus freezing rain may be unstable, etc.
To address this, we’ve created a feature that allows any user to submit a report of current conditions around them, which can be viewed on a map:
community report
You can choose from a pre-selected list of weather status icons (or even a list of emojis for when it’s feeling particularly 💩 out). There’s nothing more reliable than when someone around you tells you what’s happening, so if you have recent reports we’ll mark it in the app.
useful map
We absolutely love maps. They provide context about the weather. Sure, the forecast may say you’ll get rain, but a map will complete the picture by showing you the full width of the storm, where it will hit, and where you are relative to it.
We’ve built a large number of maps, including radar and lightning, rain and snow totals (why don’t most other weather apps offer this?), wind, temperature and humidity, cloud cover, storm tracks, and more. While you can explore them all in the Maps tab, we also make sure to embed the most relevant maps directly inside the forecast to provide a contextual background.
Notifications
A weather app is only useful if you remember to check it. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been stuck in the rain – not because the forecast was wrong, but because I didn’t check the app.
Solution? A comprehensive set of weather information. Turn them on, and no longer worry about missing important weather events.
Our notifications include everything from up-to-the-minute rain warnings to government severe weather alerts, nearby lightning, community reports and even whether a rainbow might be visible outside your door.
We also let you create custom notifications tailored to your interests. Do you want to know whether it will be windy, or whether the UV index will be high, or whether you will see heavy rain in the next 24 hours? we’ve got you covered.
Acme Labs
A weather app shouldn’t just be about helping you avoid bad weather; It should also be fun! There is a wide world of weather related phenomena that we would like to highlight. As such, we’re launching “Acme Labs,” a set of experimental tools inside the app that uncover fun and interesting things happening where you are.
We’re starting with some initial features, including: rainbow alertWhere we bring our hyperlocal rainfall forecasts to pinpoint where rainbows are occurring right now, and beautiful sunsetWhere we’ll tell you if the sunset will be particularly beautiful this evening.
Privacy and Trust
We take your privacy very seriously. Please review our privacy policy, but here is our philosophy in brief:
- We will not collect any information other than what is necessary to provide the service you are paying for. This information will be used only to provide that service, and not for anything else.
- We will not save or store any information that is not necessary. For example, we don’t want or need your location history, and not storing it in the first place means it can’t fall into the wrong hands.
- We will never sell or give your information to third parties such as advertisers. We make our money directly from our customers.
- We do not use third-party trackers or analytics services, because we cannot guarantee what they will or will not do with the information we send them.
conclusion
Well, that’s Acme Weather. We’ve been building weather apps for 15 years, from Dark Sky to Apple, and this is the culmination (best?) of everything we’ve learned along the way. This is the weather app we’ve always wanted, and always wanted to build.
acme weather is
We think you’ll love it. So give it a try, and let us know what you think!
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