Show HN: SF Microclimates

(github.com)

12 points | by weisser 17 hours ago ago

21 comments

  • meatmanek 13 hours ago ago

    My favorite weather map for SF is PurpleAir: https://map.purpleair.com/environment-estimated-temerature-f...

    There are thousands of sensors around the city. You can get a sense of shade-vs-sun temperatures by the spread of numbers you see (on cloudy days, the reported temperatures will be much closer together, while on sunny days, sensors in the sun will report elevated temperatures.)

    You do need to make sure to disable indoor sensors, and keep in mind that some sensors are faulty. (I've seen some that have been reporting a constant temperature for years.)

    • why_at 12 hours ago ago

      This one is neat, I might actually use it.

      I don't understand why it includes indoor sensors at all let alone by default. Why would I want to know the temperature inside some random building?

      • weisser 12 hours ago ago

        > I don't understand why it includes indoor sensors at all let alone by default.

        Add location_type=0 to only get outdoor sensors

        • fragmede 12 hours ago ago

          or just click the buttons that accomplish the same thing. The point is someone at PurpleAir is asleep at the wheel if such an obvious default configuration isn't being set. If they can't get such a basic thing right, why do we trust anything else from them? "Anything else" specifically including "running their software on a raspberry pi inside my home network".

    • 650REDHAIR 12 hours ago ago

      I use that and Mr. Chilly.

      Mr. Chilly is one of those niche apps that sparks joy and reminds me of the early app days.

      • weisser 12 hours ago ago

        This was directly inspired by Mr Chilly which was designed by my friend Anna Bleker.

        It's an excellent iOS app: https://mr-chilly.com/

        My goal was to do something similar as a Claude Code skill

  • why_at 12 hours ago ago

    It seems weird to me that there's no human readable version on the webpage?

    Usually what I want the weather for is to choose what to wear, not to put in a bash script or an LLM or something.

  • aurareturn 12 hours ago ago

    I made a quick website from this API that shows all of the neighborhoods, searchable, sortable.

    https://v0-weather-app-one-coral.vercel.app/

    Surprisingly, Lands End is the highest temp right now.

  • forthwall 12 hours ago ago

    An interesting problem with self-reported temperature is that people just put their outdoor sensors inside for some reason or near an ambient heat source; also in neighborhoods with tall buildings, it's a bit colder higher up, so the balcony readers are a bit off from sidewalk temperature, it is interesting to see though that one block from another is super different in temp, is it because it's actually different or is there something heating/cooling the sensor off randomly

  • ____tom____ 13 hours ago ago

    How does this compare to https://www.wunderground.com ?

    Is that the source of the data?

  • lukevp 12 hours ago ago

    This happens in Portland as well! Can this be adapted/updated to work here?

    • weisser 12 hours ago ago

      Fork the Github! Would love to see it elsewhere :)

  • spicycorncheese 13 hours ago ago

    Is it possible to get individual sensor data via this API?

    • weisser 12 hours ago ago

      no I made this primarily for a Claude Code / Clawdbot skill so I am not making it super sophisticated.

      You should use Purple Air if you want to make it more focused https://www2.purpleair.com/

  • baby 13 hours ago ago

    Can you do celsius

    • weisser 12 hours ago ago

      submit a PR

  • x3n0ph3n3 12 hours ago ago

    Multiple neighborhoods have no data, including Lakeside and Stonestown.

    • weisser 11 hours ago ago

      Good flag. I've just added add fallback to the nearest location with a sensor to the repo.