Strike Weather

A private weather app for iPhone and iPad

Release Notes

What changed in each version, newest first. The same notes appear in the app under Settings > About Strike Weather > Release Notes.

Version 1.5

Introducing Strike+, a new Burn Bans layer on the radar, and Strike Weather on Apple Watch.

New Strike+, monthly, yearly (with a free week to try it) or a one-time lifetime purchase: burn bans, Strike Weather on Apple Watch, the rain Live Activity, the radar widget, Lock Screen widgets for the chance of rain, UV, wind and sunrise and sunset, Time Machine, the radar’s wind, smoke, wildfires and satellite layers, experimental features, and the Supporters page. If you had Strike Weather before 1.5, you keep the Live Activity, the radar widget, Time Machine and those map layers without it for three months. The forecast, alerts, the Weather widget, UV and the radar’s warnings, storm cells, tropical storms and lightning stay free, and tipping still opens the Supporters page. Find it at the top of Settings.
New Burn Bans layer on the radar: counties with a burn ban in effect are shaded red, with the date it began where the state gives one. Tap a county for details. When the place you’re looking at is in a county with a ban, a small reminder shows under the forecast too. It covers Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Washington and Wyoming for now, the states that publish their bans online. The bans come from each state’s published map, which can take a while to catch up when a county starts or lifts a ban, and a city or fire department can have its own rules that aren’t shown. Check with your county before you burn.
New Apple Watch app: the temperature and conditions where you are, rain or snow starting soon, the next hours and the week, without your iPhone nearby. Switch to your home address or a favorite place from the Places button; they sync from your iPhone through iCloud.
New watch face complications: a temperature gauge, a rectangular one with the day’s range and rain starting soon, a corner one and an inline one.
New UV index in Conditions: how strong the sun is now and how high it gets later. Tap it for the scale, when to protect your skin, what to do, and the next 24 hours. It’s also in each hour and day of The Week, and on the Weather widget: the medium and large ones while the sun is up, the small one and the Lock Screen from 3 (moderate) up. On Apple Watch it’s under the conditions in the app, and there’s a new UV Index complication: a colored gauge, or the level and when it peaks. With the National Weather Service as the source, it comes from the US EPA’s UV forecast; Apple Weather, Tomorrow.io and WeatherAPI give their own.
Automatic now uses Apple Weather first everywhere, for 10 days, the UV index, rain amounts and minute-by-minute rain. The official national services (the National Weather Service, Environment Canada, DWD, SMHI and FMI) take over if Apple Weather can’t be reached, and you can still pick one in Settings > Weather Data.
The Week now goes out 10 days with Apple Weather, MET Norway, DWD, SMHI and FMI. Swipe it to see the rest. The National Weather Service and Environment Canada forecast 7 days.
Next 24 Hours is now Next 48 Hours: a day fits across as before, and you can swipe it sideways for the day after. Midnight is marked with the day’s name. Environment Canada gives 24 hours.
Buttons under the hourly chart switch its line between temperature, rain, wind, humidity and UV. Wind, humidity and UV appear when your source gives them. The numbers are written along the line; tap Values to hide them.
Something new at the top of the weather page, for days when the forecast here isn’t far enough.
New for Strike+ members: turn on Experimental in Settings, Advanced to try features that are still being tested. The first is Strike Select (beta), a weather source you then choose in Settings, Weather Data. It combines the official national weather service where there is one built in (the US, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Finland) with Apple Weather and MET Norway: forecast temperatures, rain chances and amounts, hourly wind and humidity, and the UV index are averaged across them, and anything only one of them has, such as days 8 to 10 in the US and Canada, comes from that one. Readings from the nearest weather station and official alerts are shown as issued, and every source used is credited. Elsewhere it combines Apple Weather and MET Norway.
Also in Experimental: Ask (beta), its own tab beside Radar. Type a question, such as whether you’ll need an umbrella on Wednesday, whether there’s a burn ban, or how cold it was last Christmas, and Apple Intelligence answers on your device from the app’s forecast, radar, alerts, burn bans and weather history. The menu on its title switches between your location, home and favorites, or name a place in your question (“Will it rain in Dallas tomorrow?”) and Ask (beta) switches to it. Each answer comes with the card from the Weather tab that goes with it: the day you asked about, the week, the next 48 hours, right now, the alerts or the radar. With nothing typed, the waveform button lets you talk to it instead: it listens on your device and reads each answer aloud. It can also change a few settings when you ask (“Switch to Celsius,” “Use the National Weather Service”). Your questions stay on your device. Needs a device that supports Apple Intelligence.
Recent places in Search are now remembered when you close and reopen the app. They stay on this device; swipe one away or tap Clear to remove them.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.4.2

Widgets that keep working.

When iOS doesn’t give a widget a fresh position in time, it uses the last place the app found you, or your home address, instead of showing an error.
A widget that can’t refresh keeps showing the last weather and radar it had for a while.
If location is turned off just for widgets, they now say so and where to turn it on.
With the National Weather Service as the source, the current temperature no longer shows an hours-old station reading when nearby stations stop reporting: the forecast for this hour is shown instead.
The large Weather widget fits “Tonight”, shows tonight’s low, and keeps the sun and moon clear of the weather icon.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Thanks to Dylan Collins for helping test the widget fixes.

Version 1.4.1

A fix for the widgets and a tidier weather page.

The weather page no longer shows the written forecast paragraph under the 24-hour chart. Its “high near” could read a degree off the high next to the temperature. Tap a day in the week to read that day’s written forecast.
The Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets no longer say “Location needed” when location is allowed. That message now only appears when location is actually off for Strike Weather. If a widget can’t get your position at that moment, it says so and tries again a few minutes later.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.4

Official forecasts from the national weather service where you are, a smoother and more detailed radar, easier favorites, and a tidier Settings with new ways to send feedback.

Settings is reorganized into a short list: Places, Alerts & Live Activity, Appearance, Weather Data, Tip Jar, About and Advanced, each with its own page.
New “Open To” setting next to Home Address: have the weather page open on your current location or on your home address. It syncs through iCloud.
Thank-you for tipping: a Supporters page in Settings, where you can join the beta, choose an alternate app icon and send feature requests. Nothing in the weather or the radar is locked behind a tip.
Four new weather sources: Environment Canada, Germany’s Deutscher Wetterdienst, Sweden’s SMHI and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, with official forecasts and warnings. Pick one in Settings > Weather Data, or leave Automatic on: it now uses the official service for the country you’re in (the National Weather Service in the US, plus these four), and Apple Weather everywhere else or if that service can’t be reached.
Search now has a star on every result and every recent place to favorite it right there, and Favorites and Recent each collapse with a chevron.
New “Rate Strike Weather” button in Settings opens the App Store to write a review.
New “Request a Feature” and “Report a Bug” buttons in Settings open forms where you can suggest what to build next or tell me what’s not working.
The radar’s Day and Week forecasts are drawn as smooth, soft-edged rain in the same colours as the radar, with more detail, and flow smoothly from one hour to the next as they play. Snow shows in white and freezing rain or sleet in pink. They also load several times faster, and a loop starts playing almost at once.
The radar’s Wind layer can now show the wind as streaks flowing across the map, brighter and warmer in colour where it’s stronger, with a key under the radar scale. Choose Flow or the classic Barbs in Map Layers.
New “Which Radar Should I Use?” guide in the radar’s product menu explains when to look at the mosaic and when at a single radar site. The radar also suggests switching when it would help: zoomed in on rain in the mosaic, or zoomed out past a local radar’s reach.
Switching back to the Weather tab no longer reloads the forecast and scrolls the page back to the top.
Improved the rain forecasts so the banner, alerts and Live Activity line up with the rest of the weather page. Special thanks to Dylan Collins for pointing out the mismatch.
Made the rain Live Activity more accurate. Special thanks to Dakota Grigg for reporting it.
Wildfires, storm cells and smoke on the radar now appear as soon as they’re turned on, not once the map moves.
Restore Previous Tips in the Tip Jar now finds earlier tips, so the Supporters page comes back.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.3.1

A smoother weather page.

Scrolling the weather page is smoother: the sky behind it holds still while you scroll, and the page no longer redraws itself on every frame. Special thanks to Dylan Collins for pointing out the stutter on the main screen.
On the radar, the answer to tapping the map now lines up with the other notices instead of floating off to one side.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.3

Achievements, redesigned widgets, a menu for your places, and Open-Meteo retired.

New trophy button on the weather page, next to the Time Machine: a list of achievements to unlock as you use the app. Some are hidden until you find them, and your progress syncs through iCloud.
Redesigned widgets: the sky behind them follows the time of day and the weather, a warning banner shows an active alert, a rain strip shows the next hour, and the temperature range gets a bar.
New Large widget, and a Lock Screen gauge widget.
New location menu on the weather page: tap the place name to switch between your current location, a home address and your favorite places, or to search. Set the home address in Settings.
Fixed the tab bar flickering and doubling its labels when you switch tabs.
Radar sites that have stopped sending scans now show in red with an X: on the map's site buttons, in the radar location list and at the top of the radar page.
Large text sizes now fit across the Weather, Radar and Search tabs: the week becomes a list, Conditions stack their values, and buttons no longer cut off their labels.
The What’s New sheet now fits large text sizes and iPad better, and a new “View What’s New” button in Release Notes reopens the highlights for any version that has them.
With Reduce Motion on, switching tabs no longer fades.
Open-Meteo is no longer used anywhere. If you had chosen it as your weather source, you’re switched to Automatic.
The Time Machine now uses NASA’s POWER archive: history goes back to 2001 at about 50 km resolution. Sky conditions only show for days NASA has finished processing, so the last few months show rain, snow, temperature and wind.
Rain and snow alerts and the rain-starting banner now use MET Norway’s hourly forecast, with Apple Weather’s minute-by-minute forecast for the first hour where it has one. Start times are less precise than before.
The radar’s wind barbs and its model rain layers outside the US now come from NOAA’s GFS model, and the multi-day layer switched from ECMWF to GFS. They’re smoother and less detailed than before.
If Apple Weather and the National Weather Service both fail, Automatic now falls back to MET Norway.
A new Tip Jar in Settings, if you’d like to help cover what it costs to keep the app going. Tips are optional and don’t unlock anything; the app stays free with no ads.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.2.1

A follow-up to 1.2 with radar polish and a few fixes.

The radar's play button now shows how far along the loop is while it gets ready.
Radar times for a place you searched or pinned now read in that place's time zone.
Local radar opens a little faster.
New button on local radar shows every NEXRAD radar site on the map: tap one to switch to it.
New “Delete iCloud Data” button in Settings removes your synced settings and favorite places from iCloud and puts the app back to its defaults.
Search results now open when you tap anywhere in the row, not just on the text.
Switching between local radar and the mosaic is now the first item in the radar product menu.
Removed the radar's refresh button: the page already keeps itself current.
The layers button's count badge is no longer cut off when you press it.
Wildfire hotspots are now drawn as small flames, still coloured by how recent the detection is.
Lightning markers are smaller and thin out where they would overlap, so they cover less of the radar.
Tropical storms are redrawn from National Hurricane Center data: a clear cone and track, a dot and time for each forecast point, colored by strength, and the storm's name and winds.
Storm cells are now arrows showing where each is heading and how fast; a cell forecast to pass over your place turns orange and says roughly how many minutes away it is.
The smoke layer now says “No smoke in view” instead of drawing nothing.
Radar site buttons, storms and the map's drawn overlays are now labelled for VoiceOver.
More robust handling of bad or incomplete forecast-model data.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.2

The Radar tab, rebuilt from the ground up.

Local radar: view your nearest NEXRAD site alongside a redesigned wide-area mosaic (US, Canada and Germany), switch between them with one tap, or pick a site by hand.
A Day and Week rain and snow outlook on the map, not just the last two hours and a one-hour look-ahead.
New map layers: storm-cell tracking, wildfires, wind barbs and smoke.
The radar keeps itself current in the background while you're on the page.
Much smoother scrubbing through the timeline, with nearby scans preloaded for instant playback.
A radar card on the Weather tab, and a new Home Screen radar widget.
A rain and snow Live Activity for your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island.
Reorder or hide the sections on the Weather tab.
Favorite places and recent searches in Search.
Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 1.1

Strike Weather comes to iPad and adds widgets.

iPad: a two-column Weather screen that uses the whole display, and Radar, Search and every detail screen sized for it.
Widgets: small and medium Home Screen widgets and circular, rectangular and inline Lock Screen widgets with the temperature, conditions, the next few hours and rain starting soon.
Sharper forecast radar: the estimate of the next hour is far crisper, with tick marks for every frame and an orange track that shows where recorded radar ends and the forecast begins.
Favorite map layers: star a layer to pin it to the map as a one-tap button.
A more compact radar timeline, so more of the map shows.
WeatherAPI joins Tomorrow.io and OpenWeather as an optional source you can use with your own free API key.
A new About page in Settings with the version, privacy policy, support and data credits.

Version 1.0

The first release.

Live radar with lightning, warnings and a two-hour look ahead.
Rain heads-ups and optional alerts.
A Time Machine back to 1940.
Your choice of weather source.