As you likely know, after Apple bought DarkSky, the ability to get new DarkSky API keys vanished, and the API itself is soon to be withdrawn from availability. Fortunately, a PhD student has cobbled together an API using public weather data (GFS, GEFS, HRRR) on Amazon Web Services and is offering a free API in the DarkSky format. WooHoo, said I. So I’ve adapted my existing (and soon to be obsolete) DS-forecast.php to use the new API.
The site offering the API is https://pirateweather.net/ (‘pirate’ because HRRR sounds like the ARRRR that pirates supposedly used).
The new API is not quite as full-featured as the real DarkSky API:
- English text responses only (but the PW-forecast.php handles multilingual translations built-in)
- Sparse ‘conditions’ text… usually only one word.
- Alerts are just titles… no link to details
I’ll be adding the offering to the Base-World template set next week. The script set is available from two sources:
Saratoga-Weather.org - Scripts - Pirateweather Forecast and GitHub - ktrue/PW-forecast: Global multilingual weather forecast using api.pirateweather.net forecast API
See the demo at Pirateweather Forecast script - Demo Page