gust_kph vs. wind_kph: Why Peak Wind and Sustained Wind Are Different Problems
gust_kph and wind_kph measure fundamentally different things. Here’s what that means for thresholds, alerts, and real-world decisions in your app.
API
API
Precipitation Accumulation Windows: Why hourly_precip_mm Doesn’t Add Up to daily_precip_mm (And How to Work Around It)
hourly_precip_mm rarely sums to daily_precip_mm in weather API responses. Here’s why the windows don’t align and how to handle it in your code.
API
Visibility Distance Fields Are Deceptive: What vis_km Actually Measures and How to Use It Correctly
vis_km in WeatherAPI responses isn’t what most developers assume. Here’s what the field actually represents and how to avoid the common mistakes.
API
How to Handle time_zone Offsets, epoch Fields, and DST Gaps Without Getting Burned
WeatherAPI returns both local timestamps and epoch values — here’s how they interact with DST, which one to trust, and where UTC-naive code quietly breaks.
API
Moon Phase Data from WeatherAPI: What the Fields Mean and How to Build Accurate Rise/Set Logic
WeatherAPI returns moon phase, moonrise, and moonset — but using them correctly requires knowing what the fields actually represent. Here’s how to do it right.
API
Freezing Level in API Responses: What It Is, Why It’s Not in the Payload, and How to Derive It
WeatherAPI doesn’t return freezing level altitude directly. Here’s the exact method to derive it from temp, dew point, and lapse rate — with real code.
API
How to Interpret pressure_mb Changes Over Time: Building a Storm Approach Detector
Raw pressure_mb values aren’t useful alone. Learn how to use rate-of-change logic on WeatherAPI forecast data to detect approaching storms before they arrive.
API
How to Detect Fog Programmatically: Using Visibility, Dew Point Spread, and Condition Codes Together
Fog detection via weather API is trickier than it looks. Here’s how to combine visibility, dew point spread, and condition codes reliably in your app.
API
Condition Codes vs. Raw METAR: Why You Should Stop Treating Them as Equivalent
WeatherAPI condition codes are not a direct METAR passthrough. Here’s what the mapping actually does, where it loses fidelity, and when raw data matters.
API
Humidity Is Not Humidity: vapor_pressure_deficit and why absolute humidity changes what your app should do
Relative humidity alone misleads. Here’s how to derive VPD and absolute humidity from WeatherAPI data, and when each one actually matters for your use case.