Does an app class as software?

[Dan13]

Hi everyone, wandering what everyone uses for achieving accurate clear sky readings.

I've lost a lot of faith in clear outside this past month and have used met office cloud coverage online. I'm looking for an app that can do this if possible? 

 

If not what's everyone else using these days

Many thanks 

[Waddensky]

There are many apps around that forecast cloud cover, but they are all based on just a few weather models so many apps will basically show the same data in different ways. Most use the global GFS weather forecast, because it is easily available and free to use. It's not that bad when it comes to predicting clouds (source), but its grid size is quite large. It's best to combine the forecast with actual cloud cover satellite images to get the best idea of the conditions for a given night.

[Dan13]

16 minutes ago, Waddensky said:

There are many apps around that forecast cloud cover, but they are all based on just a few weather models so many apps will basically show the same data in different ways. Most use the global GFS weather forecast, because it is easily available and free to use. It's not that bad when it comes to predicting clouds (source), but its grid size is quite large. It's best to combine the forecast with actual cloud cover satellite images to get the best idea of the conditions for a given night.

Thank you @Waddensky yea I've started using the Matt office cloud cover online. Found it to be very accrurate, only does 48 hours though. I might have a browse arround and see if anymore out there 

[pete_l]

It's probably not what you want to hear. However, when I lived in England (Marlow) I spent a lot of time on a project to assess the local weather. One thing I counted was the number of sunny days per month. For 2 years I scraped data from Met Office published data on the internet for my location and ran it through some scripts.

The conclusion was that from October through to April there were single-digit number of clear days per month. For many months that single digit was a "1" .
I also looked at the BBC forecasts and the results of that showed the best forecast was that tomorrow will be the same as today. That turned out to be the case more often than any predicted weather, no matter what that prediction was. The most frequent "on the day" forecast in the summer was sunny intervals (i.e. mostly cloudy) and in the winter it was cloudy with showers (translation: mostly cloudy).

Not very helpful, I know.

[Dan13]

1 hour ago, pete_l said:

It's probably not what you want to hear. However, when I lived in England (Marlow) I spent a lot of time on a project to assess the local weather. One thing I counted was the number of sunny days per month. For 2 years I scraped data from Met Office published data on the internet for my location and ran it through some scripts.

The conclusion was that from October through to April there were single-digit number of clear days per month. For many months that single digit was a "1" .
I also looked at the BBC forecasts and the results of that showed the best forecast was that tomorrow will be the same as today. That turned out to be the case more often than any predicted weather, no matter what that prediction was. The most frequent "on the day" forecast in the summer was sunny intervals (i.e. mostly cloudy) and in the winter it was cloudy with showers (translation: mostly cloudy).

Not very helpful, I know.

Unbelievable! But doesnt suprise me. Although I've had at least 4 to 5 , 3-4 hour imaging sessions in the last 4 weeks so not been to bad. 

But yes the uk weather is awful for this hobby