When packing for a run, a marathon, and even more so for a trail run, an accurate weather forecast sometimes becomes very relevant, allowing us to choose the appropriate equipment, plan meals and prepare psychologically.
Absolutely all forecasts are created based on several popular mathematical models. Each service may use only one model, or it may use a combination for more accurate forecasts for several days. In addition, the settings of these models may differ, which in the end sometimes leads to completely opposite results.
There are many well-known services in Russia, including Finnish Foreca (whose data is actively used by Yandex), Rp5 and, of course, the state weather service of the Hydrometeorological Center.
But until recently, the most popular were Gismeteo and Yandex.Weather, which are now rapidly losing their followers. The first one is due to inaccurate forecasts, while the second one is due to the mass increase in information and computer literacy of the population and the related outflow of users to Google.
Yandex “developed” a supposedly brand new weather prediction tool and even provided its users with an interactive precipitation map. It’s not that they turned out, as usual, full of crap, but the ubiquitous banners with the plea to install another garbage into your browser are repulsive for a long time.
And the accuracy is also far from super: several times training took place in a long rainstorm, despite Yandex promises of gorgeous weather with zero chance of rain.
The smartphone app is quite usable, but along with it it stuffs you with all the services (app components) that Yandex may need in the future for other apps (like cabs). And then, it’s a little confusing to have to give personal data to the app just to find out if it’s going to rain today.
Впрочем, большинство погодных приложений имеют разного рода недостатки: от глюков и неудобного интерфейса до явного перебора с рекламой. Лучше всего экономить батарею и смотреть прогноз просто в браузере. Например, при запросе “погода” в Гугле, он берет данные из Weather.com и выводит виджет над поисковой выдачей, учитывая ваш регион (если не включен прокси, конечно).
The forecast is quite accurate for Russia, but there are no tabs for hourly temperature, wind, and precipitation probability on mobile screens. You can, of course, go directly to the Weather site and see it there, but it is quite heavy and poorly adapted for phones, especially with a slow Internet connection.
The weather service AccuWeather, which has repeatedly proved the relevance of its forecasts and has the smallest percentage of errors, can be recognized as the most optimal and convenient option. Of the domestic ones, only the aforementioned Rp5 can match its accuracy.
Another accurate weather forecast, which is successfully used by our neighbors-trailrunners from Scandinavia – Norwegian YR.no, which has a cool and very clear hourly animation of the state of the atmosphere. Russian runners and cyclists in the Northwest (and not only) have long been gaining popularity with this site, too.
By and large, if you take these three forecast providers (Rp5, AccuWeather and Yr.no) as a basis, you can use their averaged data to judge the upcoming weather with a probability of close to 100%.
If there is a need, all of the above weather sites have their own applications for IOS and Android, which you can test yourself.
