Am suggesting an improvement in the weather icons used in the forecast to better show the conditions. For example, from what I can see there are only a couple of styles of rain cloud. Rain clouds icon improvements in the forecast could show showers, light rain and heavy rain. Taking this further, if high winds and heavy rain are forecast the icon would show a dark rain cloud, with a high wind icon overalid on it.
The NZ Metservice website recently underwent a big redesign - the icons they use are great! See this link for ideas (bottom of the page) Metservice Website Icons
Just for reference this is a screen capture from that suggested link.
I had never thought of sloping rain compared to vertical rain.
And dark clouds in real life are dependent on the size of the drops in the cloud with white clouds being mist compared to dark clouds are large drops to hail.
That NZ bit looks extreme. First I tried to puzzle out what differences they were trying to convey, and cursed the award web page’s subpar presentation (can’t even hover over an icon to see its description) …and then I read the heading: “300 custom icons (because there is more than one kind of rain)” – um, three hundred? That’s crazy.
Also, while I like the idea, there are problems with qualitative phrases like “heavy rain” that have been discussed around here (e.g., one station’s “heavy” rain is another’s “moderate” – many of us would like the ability to configure the thresholds for those adjectives*** for our stations because the WF defaults aren’t great for us).
FYI, the WF icons seem to be documented here: Tempest API
*** WF staff, know what I think could be even better? Have the system adapt to what it observes for each station so the customer doesn’t even need to configure that. Also, at device setup, offer to set defaults based on historical data for the vicinity if you have any, so both the new customer in San Diego and the new customer in Seattle get better defaults from the first day.
to me, this is not the best set of icons as it isn’t at all clear on first sight what the icon in the top left means or the icon in the top right (is it hail? is it snow?)
