SSeveral times a day, Francesca Simon, the author of the Horrid Henry children’s books, pulls out her phone to check the weather — not just where she is, but where her friends and family live, where she’s been on vacation, where she grew up.
“I love weather apps. I find them quite magical,” he said. He has about 10 locations logged and his friends make fun of his “weather porn” habit. “If I don’t like what I see on one app, I find another.”
This week, Simon discovered She shared a fixation on the weather app with Queen Camilla When the pair spoke about a miserable summer day at a charity event, Simon said: “(Camilla) said everyone makes fun of her… so we laughed about our mutual obsession.”
It’s an obsession shared by millions of people. Whether you’re going on holiday, planning a summer barbecue, worrying about your garden or suffering from hay fever, chances are you check an app at least once a day for the latest weather forecast.
The apps offer much more localized and detailed information than traditional weather forecasts, including wind speeds and the percentage chance of rain, in graphical form.
It’s a lucrative business. Most basic weather apps are free, but they make money from advertising, paid upgrades, and data monetization. In 2022, Statista said global revenue in the weather market was It is projected to reach 1.58 billion dollarsand most of its revenue comes from advertising revenue.
According to a YouGov survey from last yearApps were the primary source of weather information for Americans, used by 53% of people. One in five people said they checked apps several times a day. And the older they were, the more often they did so.
For people who need specific weather information, there may be a custom app available. For example, Windy It tracks wind speed and direction, and the Met Office has introduced specific forecasts for beaches (in partnership with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and mountains for the UK.
Most apps offer information on wind speed and direction, sunrise and sunset times, UV forecasts, pollen counts and air pollution indicators. Some offer users alerts about extreme weather conditions.
The Met Office launched its weather app in 2010 and released a major update in 2016. As of 2023, it had around 6.2 million users, mostly in the UK. Usage increases during times of extreme weather, such as named storms and heatwaves.
The app is in “continuous development” and has become more sophisticated since its launch, said Grahame Madge, a spokesman for the Met Office.
It provides “granular detail for the next 24 hours,” but the further out users look, the more general the forecast becomes. “We are scrutinized based on accuracy and we come out as one of the best centers in the world,” Madge said. “We are immensely proud of that.”
As a government body, the Met Office provides data to other weather forecasters, but three years after the BBC launched its weather app in 2013, it switched to MeteoGroup, a private sector weather company now known as DTN.
DTN “pulls data from multiple sources, including satellite imagery, global marine and continental datasets, and real-time observations from our network of more than 20,000 sensors,” said Renny Vandewege, the company’s general manager of weather and climate intelligence. The data was “processed in a high-performance cloud environment using artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
DTN “is confident that our forecasts are among the most reliable and world-leading in the industry,” Vandewege added.
The BBC admitted earlier this year that the symbols summarising the day’s weather on its app (downloaded more than 28 million times) could give an overly gloomy outlook. “The symbol of the day reflects the weather conditions that are likely to have the biggest impact on people’s lives,” it said. The BBC spokesman told the Sunday Times.
“This can give emphasis to a short, specific period of weather on any given day, and is designed to be read in context with the bigger picture and hour-by-hour details, which change based on the latest data.”
The corporation works with the National Center for Atmospheric Science to monitor and evaluate the accuracy of its forecasts across all platforms, including the app.
The UK’s weather has always been changeable, but the global climate crisis has made it more unpredictable and more prone to extreme events, meteorologists say. This could increase reliance (or, in Simon’s words, obsession) with forecasting apps.
In the UK, “compared to other parts of the world, such as California, our weather patterns rarely remain in place for more than a few days, which adds an additional challenge to weather forecasting,” Madge said.
“Being bounded between the Atlantic Ocean and the European landmass, with the tropics to the south and the Arctic to the north, gives the UK an almost unique global relationship with climate.”
Vandewege said: “Checking weather apps is a global phenomenon. Weather affects every aspect of our lives – from what we wear, what we do and often what we eat, to more serious weather impacts such as risks to safety and business operations.”
As access to weather data becomes more accessible, it’s not just the next local downpour that’s driving app usage. “We’ve seen increased interest among users in knowing what the weather is like in multiple locations, as well as in their own parts of the world.”
