About Forecast Friends
Most weather apps tell you about your sky. This one is for the other forecast you check — Mom's, your sister's, your best friend's. Add the people you care about and see everyone's weather at a glance: current conditions with temperature trend, feels-like, today's range, a seven-day outlook, wind, humidity, barometric pressure, UV, cloud cover, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset — and, for people on the coast, the tides.
Two kinds of friends, and the name means both. There are the people whose weather you're watching — and there's the animal who reports it: every card can swap its forecast for a four-panel cartoon starring a critter that actually lives where that person does, redrawn every day.
Your own current-location card is pinned to the top. Tap Update location to set it to any place you like — you don't have to be there — or press Use my current location in that dialog and it will fill in where your browser thinks you are, for you to accept. This site never asks for your location unless you press that button: not in the background, and not when the page loads. The card belongs to the device you're using, so your laptop can stay pointed at home while the iPhone app follows you around.
The forecast cartoons
Tap a tile's Cartoon button for a four-frame cartoon of today and the next three days — drawn on the spot, set at iconic places from that person's hometown, each frame labeled with its day and narrated by the character's own speech bubble. Every cartoon stars an animal-of-the-day: a cute cartoon critter that actually lives where they do — a squirrel or a cardinal in the States, a hedgehog or a badger in Britain, a kookaburra in Australia — and it changes every day. Cartoons are drawn by an AI image model, so they're occasionally delightfully wrong — that's part of the charm.
Weather data
Forecasts are provided by Apple Weather. Weather is refreshed roughly every ten minutes per location. Moonrise and moonset come from the U.S. Naval Observatory's almanac.
Tides
Cards for coastal places — and tidal rivers a surprising distance inland — show the day's tide curve under the hourly chart, with each high and low marked. Predictions come from NOAA tide stations, so coverage is the United States; the card names the station it's reading, since in a winding bay the nearest gauge matters. Inland cards simply don't show it, and you can turn tides off in Settings.
Air quality
The air quality reading on each card comes from Google's Air Quality API, which blends official monitoring stations with modeling across more than a hundred countries. U.S. locations show the familiar EPA AQI on its usual 0–500 scale; elsewhere the card shows that country's own official index — the UK's DAQI, for example — with its own name, wording, and colors.
Pollen
Daily grass, tree, and weed pollen levels come from Google's Pollen API, shown as a colored dot per type on Google's five-step Universal Pollen Index. Coverage spans roughly 65 countries; cards outside it simply don't show the row.
Weather maps
Tap a tile's Map button for a live map centered on that person — with animated radar, satellite cloud imagery, lightning, precipitation, temperature, wind, air quality, and severe-weather alert layers you can mix and match, plus a fullscreen view. The iPhone, iPad and Android apps draw a vector map with more to choose from — wind particles in motion, wildfire perimeters, smoke and dust, falling snow and snow depth, and hurricane tracks. The map imagery is provided by Xweather (Vaisala).
Weather alerts
Turn on severe-weather warnings for any card — your own current-location card included — and we'll tell you when the U.S. National Weather Service issues one for where they are. Rain alerts are just for you: a quick heads-up that rain is about to start wherever your device is. Decide how serious a warning has to be before it reaches you, and set quiet hours so routine alerts don't arrive overnight — though genuine life-safety warnings always come through. In the apps they arrive as push notifications; on the web they show up right on the cards.
Please don't rely on this app alone. These alerts are a convenience, not a warning system. They travel as push notifications, so they depend on a working connection and your device's notification settings, and the check that finds them runs every few minutes — a warning can reach you late, or not at all. Coverage is the United States only, so cards elsewhere get no severe-weather alerts. Your own severity threshold and quiet hours can hold alerts back as well, though genuine life-safety warnings always come through. In dangerous weather, keep an independent source: Wireless Emergency Alerts on your phone, a NOAA Weather Radio, or local broadcast media.
About the project
Forecast Friends is a small, independent project. No ads, no trackers, no analytics. Sign-in is passwordless — a one-time code emailed to you, so there's no password to manage. There are apps too, sharing the same account: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Android. A Premium subscription (through the App Store) unlocks more cards, unlimited cartoons and maps, and push weather alerts; a limited tier is available without one. What we store, and who else sees it, is spelled out on the privacy page.
Contact
Questions or ideas? Reach the developer at hello@ffweather.com.