ClearOutside - suitability for setting out

[gilesco]

I see blue sky outside, yes there is some high cloud, but the sky is blue. I accept that the high cloud is detrimental to my results, however, ClearOutside is essentially showing red, which indicates to me, at first glance, that viewing / setting up tonight is not going to be good.

I'm thinking about setting up anyway, rain not forecast until midnight and I think I could get some good experience out of the kit, particularly the equipment that has been updated since the last potential "GREEN" time (was that august?).

Is ClearOutside too finickity about the weather, could we add some features to make it more considerate as to our considerate expectations? E.g. "just want to be able to see something" setting (but still showing orange or red when a potentially damaging event is on the way), as opposed to only showing "GREEN" when conditions are perfect,?

[Zermelo]

Same here,  but a bit further north: CO says 100% cloud cover at the moment, while outside it's almost entirely clear.

You can always drill down into the detail behind the colours in CO. I'm not sure any tweaking in that sense will make much difference; the issue is more with the accuracy of the forecast (or the "nowcast", in this case).

One of the first lessons I learned was: if it looks good to you, irrespective of forecasts, set up and see what happens (obviously modified a little if you need to travel 50 miles to observe).

 

[Moodtastic]

I look outside and use a radar app to see what the conditions are now and whats likely heading my way and then just compare the forecasts from CO, Metoffice, BBC and Accuweather to see if its worth setting up.

I have found the last couple of years forecasts have got less accurate over the autumn and winter months especially. Sometimes they show cloud and its clear and other times its showing as clear but there is a lot of cloud cover.