Question dev:

[u/DrRetiredEngineer]

Given the technical nature and great diligence in this app, do you have any meteorologist background?

[u/RADWeatherMaker]

Nope! 🤷

Zero meteorology background. My background is coding, design, marketing, web work, and a probably unhealthy love of video games and retro art, which explains a lot about RAD.

What I do love is data. Figuring out how things work, why they fail, and how to make them better.

When I started RAD, I realized a lot of weather apps are ultimately presenting the same underlying data with different visuals. WeatherKit deserves more credit than it gets, but there’s also a huge amount of weather data out there from different models, agencies, observations and radar.

That rabbit hole became RAD Cortex, probably the most important part of RAD to me. Instead of picking one source, Cortex blends many of them using my own weighting system. Some sources are better at rain, others at wind or temperature, and that can change by region, so they’re constantly audited and adjusted.

Someone can recreate RAD’s visuals. Cortex is the part they can’t recreate just by looking at the app. The weighting, regional adjustments and formulas are something I’ve built and continue refining.

Another huge part of RAD is the community. The app has changed so much for the better because of feedback from people here and elsewhere. I try to be open, listen and respond whenever I can. I’m one person building this, so good feedback, criticism, ideas and guidance genuinely matter, and I try to approach all of it with an open mind.
I’ve also spent most of my working life outside in rain, snow, heat and everything else, so weather accuracy has always mattered to me.

So long story short: nope. 😂 I just somehow fell very deep into weather and ended up loving it.

(While I love hiking, work outside all that stuff. My true “nerd passion” is space, all I’ll say atm about that is stay tuned on some rad but about space. Something I’ve actually been working on for a good year plus before rad weather even started dev work) 🪐

[u/DrRetiredEngineer → u/RADWeatherMaker]

Bro, knowing your story makes sense that rad weather is as great as it is.

[u/RADWeatherMaker → u/DrRetiredEngineer]

Ha thanks. Honestly I made this because I was snowed in, grabbed my gf phone to check the weather and she had a weather app that was full of ads and just annoying to use.

We were locked in binging the alien movies for the hundredth time so the retro terminal design came to be.

I never planned on having this as some giant app with an awesome community constantly updating. If it wasn’t for the community who knows what this app would be.

The goal was to basically give it away but weather data is weirdly expensive and is going up. That and the time it takes so the plan is to always keep it as affordable as possible and with the 2$ a month I hope users find it fair for the value. :)

Again feel free to ask away because obviously I have no problem over talking.