Tempest Weather

Review by eFreeware

Tempest Weather is a free Android app from WeatherFlow, the company behind the Tempest Weather System. It belongs to the weather category, but it is not a general-purpose forecast app you can simply install and use on its own: it is built to work with the Tempest sensor device, which is sold separately. That single fact shapes everything else about it.

The reason to consider it is precision at a very small scale. Rather than pulling the nearest regional forecast, the app shows conditions measured where you actually live, with alerts for lightning and rain and a 10-day outlook. If you already own the hardware, or you are weighing the system as a whole, this is the piece that turns the sensor into something you check daily.

Setting up the sensor from your phone

The app is the setup tool for the hardware. It walks you through a short sequence of steps, including connecting the device to your home WiFi network, so the sensor can start reporting. Once that is done, the app becomes the place you go for current conditions.

What it reports is broad for a consumer weather app. You get temperature, humidity, dew point, feels-like and heat index readings, along with barometric pressure, sea-level pressure and pressure trends. Wind, UV and solar irradiance are included, and rain appears as rate and accumulation rather than a single vague figure.

Historical weather data graphs round out the picture, letting you look back at how conditions have moved rather than only seeing the present moment. For anyone who likes to compare this week with last, that record is the part that keeps the app useful beyond a quick glance.

Lightning and rain alerts that come from your own yard

Lightning detection reaches up to 40 km, and the app can warn you when storms approach. Rain onset alerts tell you when rain is starting rather than leaving you to guess from a regional map.

The value here is local specificity. A storm warning based on a sensor in your backyard is a different thing from one covering a whole metro area, and the same applies to rain. If you garden, keep animals outside, or simply want to know whether to bring in the cushions, alerts tied to your own location are the practical payoff.

The 10-day forecast sits alongside these readings. It is the forward-looking half of the app, while the sensor data and history cover what is happening now and what has already happened.

Smart home and irrigation integration

WeatherFlow pitches the app as a way to save time, energy and water by feeding your local data into other services. It lists compatibility with Google Assistant, Rachio, IFTTT, Siri, Alexa and Homey, among others, which means the readings can drive heating and cooling decisions, irrigation schedules and family notifications when lightning is near.

Readings can be shared and pulled in by other apps and online services through an open API. For a household already running smart devices, that turns a weather station from a standalone gadget into a data source other systems can act on.

I would treat the integrations as the feature that decides whether the app earns a permanent place on your phone. If you run an irrigation controller or a smart thermostat, the local data has somewhere to go. If you do not, the app is mainly a very detailed view of your own backyard.

What the hardware requirement means in practice

The Tempest sensor is not included. The app is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases, but it is only useful alongside a device bought separately, so the real cost sits with the hardware rather than the software. That trade-off is a significant one.

The sensor combines a sonic anemometer, a haptic rain sensor and long-range wireless reach of 1000ft. Each unit feeds observed data into WeatherFlow-Tempest's Nearcast Technology, which the developer says uses machine learning to improve forecast accuracy for your location. The forecast is billed as the most accurate for where you are, guaranteed, a claim worth reading as marketing rather than a measured result.

Setup involves connecting the sensor, so the system depends on the connection at the point where the sensor is installed. None of this is unusual for a personal weather station, but it does mean the app is a companion rather than a standalone product, and it should be judged as part of a larger purchase.

Who the app is built for

This is an app for people who own a Tempest Weather System or intend to buy one. Gardeners, irrigation users, smart home tinkerers and weather enthusiasts who want readings from their own property are the natural audience, and the integration list and API support suggest the developer has them in mind.

The app has been on Google Play since October 2017 and sits at a 4.3 average from 706 ratings, with more than 100,000 installs. Those numbers describe a settled, established product rather than a new experiment.

If you want a weather app for a city, a commute or a trip, this is not the tool for that job. It is a window into one specific location, and its usefulness scales with how much you care about that location's conditions.

A companion app for Tempest owners

Tempest Weather does one thing well: it turns a backyard sensor into readable, actionable information. Setup, live readings, lightning and rain alerts, a 10-day forecast, history graphs and smart home hooks cover the ground a personal weather station owner would expect, and the open API gives the data somewhere to travel.

The catch is unavoidable. Without the Tempest device, the app has nothing to show, and the device is a separate purchase. The forecast accuracy claim comes from the developer and should be weighed accordingly, though the underlying idea of feeding local observations into a forecast model is a reasonable one.

For households already invested in smart irrigation or a connected thermostat, the app is a sensible companion to the hardware. For everyone else, the decision starts with the sensor, not the download.

What's new in version v5.10.18

Bug Fixes and Performance Enhancements