Frequently asked questions

Depends how far out you’re looking. Tomorrow’s forecast is usually a safe bet; day seven is more of an educated guess, and every forecaster on earth will tell you the same thing. We show you the actual number behind the forecast, not just a sun-and-cloud icon, so you can decide for yourself how much to trust it instead of taking our word for it.

Live meteorological data providers — the same kind of sources serious forecasters and pilots use, not a guy checking the sky out his window (no offense to that guy). We pull current conditions, forecasts, and severe alerts from real feeds and refresh them on a schedule, not once a day and hope for the best.

Because forecasting is genuinely hard and every app leans on a different model, and the models themselves don’t always agree — especially about when rain starts and how much falls. If your weather apps are arguing with each other, that’s usually the atmosphere being genuinely uncertain, not one of them being "wrong."

It’s a 0-to-11+ scale for how fast unprotected skin burns, not a temperature reading — you can get a UV index of 9 on a cool day at altitude with a clear sky. Under 3 is low risk. 3 to 5 means fair skin can burn in under 20 minutes. Once you’re in the high-to-extreme range, that drops to single-digit minutes, and yes, cloud cover barely helps — UV punches through light clouds almost undiminished.

The AQI rolls up ozone, particulates, and a few other pollutants into one number so you don’t need a chemistry degree to know if it’s a bad-air day. 0–50 is good, 51–100 is fine for most people but worth a second thought if you’re sensitive to pollution, and anything past 100 starts affecting healthy people too, not just at-risk groups. We show it for every location for free, full stop — it’s a safety number, not a premium feature.

It’s not "it’ll rain X% of the day" — it’s the odds that measurable rain (enough to register in a rain gauge) falls somewhere in the forecast area during that window. A 30% chance means roughly 3 times out of 10 under similar conditions, somewhere nearby gets wet. Above 70%, plan for rain. Below 20%, you’re probably fine leaving the umbrella home.

There’s a toggle right under the current-conditions readout on the homepage. One click, every temperature on the page flips with it.

Not yet, but it’s on the list — we know typing "Chicago" for the fortieth time gets old. Until then, the quick-pick city chips on the homepage cover a handful of common searches so you can at least skip the typing for those.

No. No push notifications, no "just checking in" emails, nothing pinging your phone uninvited. If you want a forecast, come get it — we won’t chase you around with one.

Yes — official watches and warnings show up as a banner right on the homepage the moment one’s active for your location. And no, we’ll never put that behind a paywall. If there’s a tornado headed your way, you shouldn’t have to pull out a credit card to find out.

Listen to your local emergency management agency, not us. We’ll surface the official alert the moment it’s issued so you’re not caught off guard, but in a real emergency, your local authorities and emergency broadcasts are the ones with the full picture — we’re not a replacement for them.

Nope. Open the site, search a city, get a forecast — no signup, no email, no "create a password" wall in your way. An account will only ever matter for optional extras like saved locations, and even then it’ll stay optional.

It gets used to fetch your forecast, and that’s it. If you tap "Use my location," your coordinates are rounded to about a kilometer before they ever touch our servers — precise enough for an accurate forecast, too fuzzy to pin down your actual house. Nothing about your location gets stored or linked to who you are. Full details are in our Privacy Policy, if you want the fine print.

The stuff that matters day to day — current conditions, the forecast, severe weather alerts — stays free, permanently. That’s not a promotional price, that’s the plan. Down the road we’re planning an optional paid tier for the specialist stuff (30-day outlooks, historical comparisons, marine and boating forecasts) for people who want more than the daily basics — but nobody’s ever getting charged just to see if it’s going to rain.