Why Is It So Hard to Make a Good Weather App?

Galaxy Brain

The Atlantic

Technology

4.5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How are we still getting caught in the rain? This week’s “Galaxy Brain” explores the world of weather forecasting—specifically the apps on our phones that we have come to rely on. As climate change intensifies storms and smartphones put hyperlocal forecasts in our pockets, we’ve never had more meteorological data. And yet plenty of people lament that their weather apps can’t get it right. Charlie digs into why we obsessively refresh our weather apps, why we blame them when they’re wrong, and what it really means to forecast an inherently chaotic atmosphere. Charlie talks with the physicist Adam Grossman, a co-creator of the cult-favorite weather app Dark Sky that redefined minute-by-minute forecasting before being acquired by Apple. Grossman pulls back the curtain on how weather predictions are made—a process that includes satellites, weather balloons, massive physics simulations, and machine-learning models—and explains why forecasts are improving even if it doesn’t always feel that way Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's sort of the realization that all weather's forecasts are going to be wrong, right?
0:06.0	There's just nothing you can do about it.
0:08.0	The key is how do you convey that uncertainty?
0:16.0	I'm Charlie Wurzel and this is Galaxy Brain, a show where today we are going to get to the bottom of a question plaguing mankind since time
0:22.5	and memorial.
0:23.3	Do weather apps suck?
0:24.9	People have very strange
0:26.9	relationships to weather apps.
0:29.2	They check them obsessively.
0:31.7	They love them.
0:32.9	They talk about them.
0:33.7	They pay money for them.
0:35.7	And at the same time,
0:39.0	they constantly complain about them. Weather apps often leave us high and dry or low and wet, whatever you want to call
0:45.4	it. Weather apps are a feature of life, and yet the weather is super unpredictable. And so
0:52.7	we get this tortured relationships with these devices. And they
0:56.0	tend to be really, really important as the climate gets more and more erratic, as there's more
1:03.8	instances of extreme weather. And as we become increasingly information junkies, we rely on these apps more and more. And frankly, a lot of times
1:14.2	they don't work the way we want to. And so I wanted to demystify these weather apps. I wanted to
1:19.7	talk to somebody who could tell me how they work, how they've gotten better, how they've gotten
1:24.6	worse, whether we need all the information about the
1:27.9	weather that we have. Remember, back in the day, we just used to look in the newspaper and get
	...

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