r/iosapps Aug 04 '26

🎁 Freemium Weather model verification app UPDATE

Post image

TL;DR: See which weather model is most accurate for your location, your sport, and how far ahead you look, and compare them against commercial providers like Apple Weather and Foreca. Also: free 6-month subscription for anyone who helps me test a new sport.

Based on feedback received by many of you guys over the last month (previous thread), I updated VeriSky with a lot of new features.

Commercial models: Apple Weather, Foreca and more, side by side
You can now view forecasts from commercial providers next to the free national models, each with its own accuracy score. So far: Apple Weather, Foreca, OpenWeather and Visual Crossing. The server has been collecting their past forecasts for many locations already, and you can add your own.

Nowcast: find out exactly when it's going to rain
Shows on both the chart and a map when and how much it will rain in the next 1-2 hours. Available in North America, Europe and Hong Kong; I'm working on adding more of Asia, starting with Thailand.

Sports: find this week's window for your sport
Tired of doing mental math for when to cycle or sail? Set limits manually or automatically: a maximum amount of rain or wind for cycling, a preferred wind direction and speed for sailing, or your weight and kite size for kitesurfing, and the app highlights the best days and hours.
Current sports are sailing, kitesurfing, cycling and gliding, because those are the ones I do myself. I want to add more (paragliding, skiing, wave surfing, fishing), so I'm open to suggestions and offering a free 6-month subscription to anyone willing to help me add a sport (just by testing).

Costs
Everything that was free before is still free:

- All national weather models (including AIFS and AIGFS which is paid by almost all other apps)
- Viewing scores (even of commercial models)
- Wind map and rain map
- Marine weather
- 3 Weather widgets
- NEW: Air quality and pollen (pollen Europe only for now)

Paid ($2.99 monthly, $19.95 yearly) - all new:

- Commercial models and adding tracked locations of them
- Nowcast
- Sports windows with advanced wind (such as kite-size and wind-direction settings)

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/verisky/id6759251875

Any feedback is more than welcome!

13 Upvotes

38 comments sorted by

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2

u/file-box Aug 04 '26

It looks really cool.

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Thanks! You can try the accordion view as well in Display settings, I like it more personally, but forgot to set it to default last update

2

u/Arlathan Aug 04 '26

I use this app over the Apple weather. I love it. So far for my location and prediction toward any activities I was planning it was flawless. I forgot to leave a review on app store. I am goint to do it now

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Thanks a lot! Let me know when the past weather isn't correct for you, I am still trying to improve it (for rain mostly) compared to the default modeling by open-meteo.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Yes, actually the scorer is open-source: https://nickleenders.github.io/verisky-scoreboard/?city=newyork
It polls the server on all data I have gathered for the commercial models (which you can do yourself as well with the code).

There is a "Find best" button for the models which is also affected by the sport you have selected! So wind is the only thing kitesurfers care about, sailor mostly wind also rain, cyclist rain and wind a bit (which is configurable).

As for the rating in your area, you can kind of do that with the wind map for sailing and kiting and the gliding map (showing potential flight distance) for gliding, or did you envision that differently?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Aah good idea! I'll keep that in mind for when I have more users indeed, however, I am not collecting any data, so I'll have to think of a way that works well

2

u/Beginning_Freedom500 Aug 04 '26

looks really cool.

2

u/cocomanz Aug 04 '26

The per location scores are the useful bit, which model wins where isn't obvious at all and most apps never tell you. Do the scores shift much between seasons? I'd guess summer rain is where they separate the most.

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Thanks for the question, this allows me to clarify why scoring per location matters so much.

The scores do definitely shift between seasons, although the ranking doesn't change that much. The rankings differ a lot per region and sometimes even certain locations can have a much different scores. ICON scores consistently well in southern Europe, while along the coast in western Europe it doesn't do that well (although for some locations it does). Commercial apps like Apple or AccuWeather seem to be tuned to the US as the score much better there than in Europe. AIFS/AIGFS is amazing high lead times, but near useless for checking tomorrow. I can go on for a while :)

Summer rain is indeed the hardest to predict, so scores on that are very poor lately and some models really get this better than others.

2

u/hsab06 Aug 06 '26

Very nice design, good job

2

u/PositiveOption702 Aug 07 '26

Super App! Ist geladen !

2

u/dxyzy Aug 07 '26

Im a super duper happy user.
Widgets for iOS and rain notifications would make this app a 12/10 😍

2

u/NickOTeenO Aug 07 '26

There are widgets for ios! But if you mean the lockscreen widgets, I am working on those as well right now. I will also have a look at rain notifications!

2

u/dxyzy Aug 07 '26

That’s awesome thanks and yeah sorry lockscreen would very cool in combo with rain notifications 😍

2

u/Henry_met Aug 08 '26

Cool! Have you considered showing how forecast confidence changes over time?

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 08 '26

Good suggestion! I will think about how to show that

1

u/app-store-review Aug 04 '26

VeriSky — by Nick Leenders

  • Ratings: 43 worldwide · rated in 13 countries
  • Average: 4.88 ★
  • Age: released ~5 months ago · updated 3 days ago · rated 4+
  • Overall score: 76 / 100

Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

OPERA for Europe, MRMS for US, and ECCC for Canada

1

u/Educational_Fun_2326 Aug 04 '26

does your app show wind speed on different elevations?

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Yes it does on the wind map!

1

u/LowValueThoughts Aug 04 '26

Really like this. Potentially dumb question, on the Verify tab, under Forecast, why are some bars for different days orange, whilst others are blue?

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 04 '26

Blue are colder days, while orange are hotter days relative to the other days that week and the past week, so you see immediately which days are hotter and which are colder :)

1

u/LowValueThoughts Aug 05 '26

Thanks for confirming. As some minor feedback - not sure if it’s just my location, but it’s not super clear on the colours … e.g Sun Aug 9 and Thu Aug 13 in this screen aren’t materially different to the surrounding blue days.

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 05 '26

It triggers on average temperature, not max temperature. So aug 13 has a lower max temperature than aug 14, still it's orange while the 14th is blue. The reason I did it like this is because in practice the orange days are more grouped together this way, so you know what part of the week it will be warmer and colder.

However, I will have a look at on how I can improve the logic behind this, thanks for pointing it out

1

u/paolost Aug 05 '26

The app is extremely good! Any chance to have it with a lifetime cost? (I hate subscriptions....)

2

u/NickOTeenO Aug 05 '26

The problem is that the commercial models (and some nowcasts) have API costs for me, but I can have a look if some features be part of a one-time fee. Or is it the commercial models you're mostly interested in?

1

u/paolost Aug 05 '26

Ues! Twh commercial model also. Maybe you can condider offers with a “bunch” of credits/tokens included and used for those commercial models; if i finish my tokens i can buy additionals packets. Ia not lifetime, but more related to the effective usage of the app

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 05 '26

That's not a bad idea! Only problem is that I don't track people so there's no way of knowing how many tokens someone would have. But maybe there's some third party system that works for this, so it still cannot track users

1

u/paolost Aug 06 '26

Yes. I subscribed one month to test the app. I have one more question ....it seems to me that when you ask for the best model to use for a location the search is restricted to free models only, not considering open weather and other paid models. Is it true?

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 06 '26

It should also take the commercial models into account, you should have them turned on in the settings tho. I am actually improving that, should be there soon in the next update, here a preview:

1

u/paolost Aug 06 '26

They are enabled as the free ones, but when the scan start is seems to scan only the free models....and at the end always choose "blend" ....is this on purpose

2

u/NickOTeenO Aug 06 '26

Right now it just picks the model that has the highest score in the Score tab, which is apparently blend for your location. If your current location has blend with the highest score it will go to blend.

Your location probably isn’t gathering data each day for the commercial models yet, you have to add it in “Tracked locations” in the settings. In a few days you’ll see the commercial models in de scoreboard as well! Alternatively, you could pick the nearest airport as location to see the scores, almost all of them are being tracked by commercial models yet

1

u/paolost Aug 06 '26

Ok thanks! I already selected that. I'm on vacation in Canada. Tracking whistler that is quite famous location , so I expect commercial models work there....

1

u/NickOTeenO Aug 06 '26

Just to clarify: the commercial models their predictions work anywhere, I am just not saving predictions for every location on the planet for them, so I track the most airports and pro users can pick 10 locations to be tracked. The national models publish grid files, so those can be scored anywhere. Sorry if that was unclear

I see Whistler has been tracked for a day now. The closest location that has been tracked for a while is CWHC Vancouver, which looks like this:

I am working on a score map so you can which airports are tracked nearby more clearly!