At the end of 2022, Dark Sky API shut down, leaving a significant gap in the weather API market.
If you were a fan of Dark Sky’s Android app or pulled their weather data into your product at all, you need a Dark Sky API alternative.
Tomorrow.io offers the best Dark Sky weather API alternative on the market.
This blog will fill you in on why we think Tomorrow.io’s weather API can meet the needs of your Dark Sky API gap and explain how much more it can do for you, your business, and your weather data needs.
What To Look For in a Dark Sky API Alternative
Suppose you’re looking for basic weather data for your app or business needs, including your simple temperature, precipitation, and humidity information. In that case, there are many APIs on the market that offer the data you’re looking for.
You can create a weather widget, for example, using the simplest weather data on the market and get daily updates on how cold or warm it’ll be outside, if it’s going to rain, and how humid it will be.
Most weather providers simply pull in existing governmental data from sources like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA, which are offering us global observations from the Join Polar Satellite System and a variety of other satellites in low earth orbit.
But there is more weather data out there! So much more from sources including the thousands of weather stations in existence, regional automated weather sensors and networks, stationary ocean buoys, drifting buoys, aircraft, ships, and so many other interconnected networks.
Tomorrow.io combines traditional weather data sources alongside new sensing technologies, including cell towers, not used by anyone else. This data has the following advantages over the data from traditional weather APIs, including:
- Hyperlocal Weather Observations: 500-meter radius observation vs. 2,000-4,000 meters
- Ground-Level Tracking: Precipitation as low as 30 feet off the ground vs. over 1,000 feet for radar.
- Up-to-date Data Delivery: Many Dark Sky API alternatives can deliver data every minute, but that data can be 5-20 minutes old (or older). Tomorrow.io provides updated data every minute and hour.
- NowCasting: Tomorrow.io provides minute-by-minute forecast data (aka minutely forecasts) for 0-6 hours out. Most other APIs provide this data in 1-hour chunks vs. 1-minute.
Why Use Tomorrow.io’s Weather API
Unlike other Dark Sky API alternatives, Tomorrow.io’s numerical data and map layers offer hyper-local, minute-by-minute weather data that allow you to build almost anything. When you see how much more data you can access, you may realize you can build something different or more ambitious than your original project.
What does that mean? The Tomorrow.io Weather API offers data in a variety of formats and timeframes, including:
- Historical Station Data – Weather data going on four weeks back.
- Historical Tomorrow.io Data – The last 6 hours of historical data are based on Tomorrow.io’s proprietary technology.
- Realtime Weather Data – Realtime weather based on our proprietary model
- Short-term Forecast (NowCast) – 6-hour proprietary NowCast data available in minute-by-minute intervals
- Near-term Forecast (Hourly) – Up to 96 hours of data available.
- Daily Forecast – Forecast of up to 15 days out
Tomorrow.io also provides data you might not expect to get from a Dark Sky Weather API alternative, including:
- Air Quality – Data that helps you understand how increased air pollution impacts health
- Pollen – Tracking multiple types of pollen depending on your area
- Road risk – A scoring system to help you navigate through and around treacherous roads
- Fire Risk Index – The current risk of fire for a specific location
With Tomorrow.io’s complete suite of weather data and solutions far beyond your standard daily forecast, the options really expand and so does what you can do with weather data in your application or business. You can build even more interesting weather projects than you may have imagined with this type of data.
Build More with a Better Weather API
No matter what you’re building with your Dark Sky API alternative, you need quality weather data that is easy to work with.
Tomorrow.io Weather API is built on AWS, Autodesk, REST API using JSON for the requests and the responses, with HTTPS support, making it easily accessible and usable.
Not sure where to start?
Tomorrow.io offers in-depth weather API documentation with a ton of information about how to use our weather API to build your project.
You can also find multiple pricing tiers available, from our free weather API up to enterprise plan, depending on your data needs.
But more importantly, you can do so much more with more in-depth and localized weather data. The use cases become far more interesting when you have a different kind of weather API like Tomorrow.io. For instance, you could:
- Monitor air pollution in your city with NodeJS
- Build a smart home device with a Raspberry Pi
- Create a weather chatbot
- …and much more
The limit of what you build is really on you — not the Dark Sky API alternative that you choose. Whether you’re looking to build a simple weather app or add an exciting pollen feature to your app, you have all the data you need to succeed.
Looking to get started? Try Tomorrow.io’s Weather API for free today.