Rain Check

What it does

Rain Check reads the rain forecast in 15-minute steps and tells you, in plain words, when rain is coming – and helps you pick the driest time for whatever you're doing outdoors.

• Home / Here / Place – Home is your own location. Here uses your phone's location wherever you are. Place lets you search any town, village or postcode (full or just the first part, e.g. LS6).
• Now – a countdown to the next rain, a 14-hour rain chart (each bar is 15 minutes) and an hour-by-hour outdoors rating from rain chance, wind and temperature.
• Plan – pick an activity (walk, run, bike ride, road cycling, paddle boarding, flying, gardening, golf, BBQ and more), a day and how long. Add a start time to see the chance of rain and whether it'll be too windy, cold or dark; leave it empty to get the three best times that day. Save a plan and your phone gets a heads-up beforehand – with a better time if the weather has turned. Up to 7 days ahead; forecasts more than a few days out can change.
• Flying also checks visibility and low cloud, and paddle boarding and road cycling check wind gusts. It's a quick guide only – always use official aviation weather (METAR/TAF) for flight planning.
• Radar – an animated map of rain over the last hour around the place you're viewing (orange dot).
• Snow – when it's cold enough, Rain Check works out the chance of snow. A ❄ Snow outlook card shows the chance, when it's likely and whether it could settle.
• Alerts – the Pi checks every 10 minutes and nudges your phone before rain reaches Home, and before each saved plan, even with the app closed.

Setting up alerts

1. Install the free ntfy app from the App Store.
2. In ntfy tap +, and subscribe to the topic shown in the Alerts tab here.
3. Set your Home, switch alerts on, Save, then tap Send a test alert.

Keep the topic name hard to guess – anyone who knows it can read your alerts.

Add to Home Screen

In Safari tap Share → Add to Home Screen to use it like an app.

What's new

v2.2 – New activities: flying, road cycling and paddle boarding. Plans now take wind gusts into account, and flying checks visibility and low cloud.

v2.1 – New, cleaner activity icons.

v2.0 – Activity planner: choose an activity and time, see the chance of rain, find the best time to go, and get alerts before your plans. 7-day forecast.

v1.2 – Now called Rain Check. Snow and sleet forecasts with a chance-of-snow outlook, and snow alerts.

v1.1 – New rain radar map. Search for any place or postcode and see when it'll rain there. Recent searches are remembered, and any place can be made your Home.

v1.0 – First release: rain countdown, 14-hour rain chart, hourly ratings, phone alerts and a morning forecast.