UKC

http://www.mountainweatheruk.com/#home

I noticed this on Twitter yesterday and thought it was worth a look. First impressions are very good, and it's available for both iOS and Android. It gives you easy access to a wide variety of weather information for mountain areas, including MWIS, SAIS, forecast maps, summit weather station data, and individual mountain forecasts. The initial release seems a little buggy (it has frozen a couple of times) but this could develop to be one of the best apps for UK hillwalkers.

(Disclaimer: I have no relationship with the developers)

In reply to Only a hill:
It seems like it is just packaging up the Met Office Mountain Weather forecasts, rather than offering its own, but it still looks quite useful, though.

In reply to Mark Bull:

I think the main benefit is in collecting all this data into one place, in an easy-to-use mobile package. For years I've had disorganised collections of mobile bookmarks, but this does the job much better.

Early days for the app yet of course, but I think it has potential.

In reply to Only a hill:

Thanks for the link, I've downloaded this onto my phone. Looks good so far with one stutter on the mountain summits but as you say having all the weather info available in the one place is very handy. I've stuck it alongside the Winter Highland application which also contains weather and webcams from the ski centres.
I wish Graham Haley's Hill Lists (which I had on a previous Apple device) was available for android as I can't find anything as good, any recommendations there?

In reply to Only a hill:
it does look good, but I do wonder how they are obtaining the metoffice's data, are they scraping the website for the data and redisplaying it, or do they have a proper commercial license (which i suspect isn't cheap?!).

I suspect the former is misuse of their data, and I don't particularly want to spend money on an app which will just stop working when metoffice intentionally block it, or just change their layout.

edit: seems like it is being encouraged now! http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/datapoint/support/faq

In reply to alastairbegley:

It's unlikely that Apple would approve an app that was illegally scraping data, but like you I'd be interested to know the data sources and how the data is being crunched - ie by human forecasters, like MWIS, or by computers.

In reply to chris_s:

it seems like there is a now an API to freely access the metoffice data (up to a certain volume of requests). From reading the FAQ (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/datapoint/support/faq ). I suspect this is just a straight repackaging of the metoffice data in a better format for mobiles. So the mountain forecasts will be the same as the mettofice forcasts generated by a human at the mettofice, and the summit forcecasts will be from the metoffice model

In reply to alastairbegley:

Anything has to be better than the Met Office's own packaging in its app and on the web... But the API looks like a good idea. I'd rather the Met spent money on data crunching and forecasting rather than developing its own apps.

In reply to chris_s:

just been having a look around the app, seems really good so far. The ability to see all the good metoffice data, along with the mwis and sais data in one place is fantastic. (MWIS and SAIS just have useful links the relivant web pages rather than displaying it differently in the app)

In reply to Only a hill:

Mine showed me summit data/forecasts last night and this morning the link has evaporated, although I can still see Sgurr Alasdair in my recent links widget. Anyone else get the same thing?

In reply to BnB:

I'm not getting this bug, but some of the summits are coming up with 'no data' messages when I tap them.

In reply to Only a hill:

My bad. I was looking in the wrong place. The summits are hidden within the regions. Logical really

In reply to Only a hill:

I've now published my initial review of this app.
http://www.alexroddie.com/2015/11/mountain-weather-uk-hands-on-review.html

In reply to Only a hill:
Alex, could you check the amount of storage this app is using and if you're also up in the 240MB range do you think this is normal as it seems high to me. I think it was about 60 odd MB for the download - where's the rest coming from?

In reply to Only a hill: will this not impact the likes of the MWIS site which I assume relies on traffic? unless of course MWIS has a commercial arrangement with the app developers. Would hate to see this killing that service

In reply to Erik B: Hi, I am the App developer.

The data does come from the met office data point service. The met office do encourage the use of this for app development which is a really healthy thing. MWUK focuses on the mountain oriented data feeds and presents them in an organised and visually appealing manner.

I felt it only right to include the MWIS and SAIS links as these are essential services that everyone uses. The only impact in my opinion will be to direct more traffic to MWIS and SAIS, which is a good thing for everyone.

I have spent the last year putting this app together in my spare time. I hope everyone really likes it.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

Care to comment on the storage space the app is taking up?
I'm showing the following (Android 4.4.4)

Total 244MB
Application 86.76MB
SD card app 155MB
Data 1.86MB
SD card data 108KB

I'm not going to pretend I understand how it all fits together but this seems to use a lot of storage?

Like many others I'm obsessive about the weather (particularly in winter) and I like what I've seen of the app so far, I hope it works out for you.

In reply to drmarten: I'll take a look into this and get back to you.

In reply to Only a hill:
All have a look at YR:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=en_GB

The Graph View is really nice

In reply to ChrisJD:

Yes, YR is a great app – it's my go-to general-purpose weather app. It's nice to have mountain-specific forecasts though.

In reply to drmarten:


Mine is up to 155MB storage, which I agree is bigger than the initial download. Maybe it's caching data? Seems a big difference though.

In reply to drmarten:

I have released a new Android update (v1.3) which reduces the app size down to around 29MB.

Here are the updates:

Added support for Android 6 Marshmallow.
Reduced App file size down to around 29MB
Disabled landscape orientation.
Suspends Location Services when in sleep (background) to improve battery and performance.
Recent items are now added to the top of the list.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

I got the update this morning and the app size has decreased significantly. Thanks for your efforts with this and as I said previously I hope it earns you a few quid, it's now my main source for weather forecasts.

Works just fine on my Samsung Galaxy. Tried to load it on my Nexus but all it ever says is that it has stopped working. Being a computer illiterate I'm not sure if it's something I've done or if it just doesn't work with the Nexus.

Advice please.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

Is there a reason why it requires iOS9? I'm stuck on an iPhone 4 for now, and I know some developers target the latest iOS because it's a bit easier rather than because they need features in that version. It would be great to be able to give you my £3.99

In reply to Alan Breck:

Alan, Does your Nexus have Android 6 Marshmallow? The new version of MWUK v1.3 now supports this. Please give it another try with the update. It should work fine.

In reply to climbwhenready:
There is a pending update for iPhone to support iOS 7.1 onwards. (It was my bad to release 1.0 only for iOS 9). Unfortunately it takes Apple way way too long to process updates and releases. This one has been waiting for over a week! which is very frustrating. Hopefully it will be available in the next day or so.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

I'm struggling with the app on my Samsung tablet. Synoptics, links etc work fine, but when I try to open an actual Mountain area or Summit forecast, it goes blank then gives me a "stopped working" message.

In reply to Mal Grey:

Mal, I've emailed you.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

Thanks, mate, replied. Hopefully just a teething problem, as app looks great. Or maybe its my fairly ancient tablet...

Fingers crossed.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

Now sorted. Ta much for your help in solving the problem.

In reply to climbwhenready:

There is a new iPhone update (v1.1) now available on iTunes for MWUK which supports earlier versions on iOS (v 7.1 onwards)

New in this update:

- Support for earlier iOS versions, v7.1 onwards.
- Fix for mountain forecast reloading correctly.
- Area list correction.
- Minor Performance improvements.

In reply to chris_s:


How would they know? It's unlikely that the tester knows much about mountain weather forecasts?

In reply to Nutkey:

The data does come from the met office data point service. The met office encourage the use of this for app development, which is a really healthy thing.

In reply to thefrontpoint:

Brilliant, thanks!

Bringing this information into one place is really nice. I don't know how much it's downloading because it's on wifi at the moment, but if the data it needs to download is less than the website with all the chrome, that is really useful for mountain locations.

In reply to climbwhenready:
The size of the data download is tiny. Downloaded on demand (when you select an area or mountain) and the size is very small. (for those techy types it's a very small json payload).

In reply to Only a hill:

Bought this yesterday, great app, cheers.

In reply to Only a hill:
There is a new Android update (v1.4.3) now available for Mountain Weather UK. This includes:

- Added colour to winds speeds (Orange >= 50, Red >= 70 mph)
- Shows snow symbol for Precipitation Probability when snowing.
- Updated text colour to white for dark temperature colours (e.g. -8c)
- Improved expanding of mountain forecast periods (now animated)
- Performance improvements

http://www.mountainweatheruk.com

In reply to Mountain Weather UK:

All working now. Thanks for the continued improvements and updates, seems to have done the trick.

In reply to Mal Grey:
There is another new Android update (v1.4.5) now available which caters for the strange format the met office sometimes use in winter for temperatures for Scottish forecasts (i.e. PS01 (plus 1), MS06 (minus 6)). The update now reads these correctly to produce the max/min temperature summary at the top of the area forecast page and provides more readable text by replacing PS and MS with 'plus' and 'minus' which is more consistent with the rest of the met office forecasts.

There is also an iOS iPhone update pending, awaiting Apple approval which will be available shortly.

Please note that if you do not have this update then the max/min temperature summaries may read incorrectly in the area forecasts. For example MS07 will be interpreted as 7c. Please update for Android now or for iOS as soon as the update is available.

In reply to Only a hill:

There is a major new update 1.5 for Mountain Weather UK now available.
(Currently available for Android and very soon on iOS once Apple approve it.)

This includes 10 new mountain areas (including Northern Ireland) and google map support for mountain summit and weather stations.

Additional mountain areas included are:

Scotland
Southern Uplands

England
North York Moors
Northumberland
Northern Pennines
Dartmoor
Exmoor

Wales
Cambrian Mountains
Northern Ireland
Mourne Mountains
Sperrin Mountains
Antrim Hills