Upcoming Rain Notifications on iOS
August 11, 2024
Since getting an iPhone, I have started receiving notifications that say things like “Light Rain Soon: Expected to start at your location at [time], and last for X minutes”.
And the thing is, on days when I get these notifications, I know that I will be getting them at some point. The sky has already made it very clear that today will be a day that it will rain at some point, and the rain might just last a little while, but when it’s done, it may rain again later, maybe a few times before the rain is done for the day. On these days, I end up getting “rain soon” notifications over and over and over again. (Yes, I should probably just disable them, but I haven’t yet.)
On days where the sky doesn’t seem from the get-go to be ready to rain sometime soon, but it does later rain, there is usually some rather dramatic shift that takes place; you can tell by looking out a window that it will indeed be raining soon. At these times, often social media will also tell me - the local weather guy is posting radar updates, and my friends are posting about fretting over their garden plants or making it home from work by bike before the storm begins.
I imagine that whoever conceived of the “rain soon” notifications thought they’d be useful to someone, and perhaps they are! But I suspect that those people are in a different climate than I am, one where rain is maybe less predictable, but enough a nuisance to merit forewarning? I’m not sure - let me know if you experience these notifications differently!