Ilmapiir - weather in Estonia

Watchdog

About this app

Most weather apps show a single number and make it look certain. Ilmapiir is a weather forecast that shows the forecasts of nine national weather models side by side - ECMWF, DWD ICON, NOAA GFS, UK Met Office, Météo-France, MET Norway, Canada's GEM, Japan's JMA and China's CMA - and how far they diverge from each other. When the models agree, you can trust the forecast. When they differ, you see it straight away and can decide for yourself which one to believe.

In the app:

The blue line on the chart is the median of the nine models, the dark band is the likely range and the light band everything that is possible. The bar under the chart shows hour by hour whether the models agree, are uncertain or disagree. You can also show all nine model lines separately.

A map of Estonia with five layers: temperature, wind with moving wind arrows, precipitation, a live thunderstorm picture, and road weather with the Estonian Transport Administration's road weather stations and cameras. For the current hour the map shows actual readings from the Estonian Environment Agency's weather stations, at other times the models' forecast - a note above the map always tells you which one you are seeing. A slider lets you change the day and hour up to seven days ahead.

Thunderstorm watch: choose a radius of 10 to 100 km and get a phone notification when lightning strikes near your chosen location. Strikes arrive in real time from the Blitzortung community network.

There is also a next-three-hours overview with a practical tip, seven-day cards with ranges and a precipitation vote, light and dark themes, location search and a GPS button.

Data

Forecasts come via Open-Meteo open data, actual measurements from the Estonian Environment Agency's Weather Service, lightning strikes from the Blitzortung.org community network, and road weather from the Estonian Transport Administration's open data. Map boundaries are from geoBoundaries, lakes from OpenStreetMap.

The app has no adverts, no account and no tracking. Location permission is only requested when you tap the GPS button yourself; the app also works without it.

Ilmapiir does not issue official weather warnings - those come from the Estonian Environment Agency's Weather Service.

The app is available in English and 10 other languages; the map covers Estonia. Forecasts for anywhere else in the world are available through the location search.

What’s new

The home screen widget no longer loses its content when a single network request fails: the last good weather stays on screen along with the time it was fetched. The connection is also given more time and a second attempt.