I Built a Weather App, which I use every day.

I got tired of weather apps that just say “partly cloudy.”

So I built GribGrab — a simple page that shows you a full hourly chart for the next 7 days. Temperature, rain, wind, pressure, all in one view. No account, no app. Just search a city and see what’s coming hour by hour.

Why

I commute by bike. I travel. I plan outdoor activities. I want to know when exactly it’s going to rain on Thursday — not just “Thursday: showers.”

Most of weather app I tried wrapped that in so much UX that the actual data was buried.

So I built the thing I wanted.

The Reddit Moment

I posted GribGrab on r/weather. Someone replied — not with “nice job” — but with a detailed explanation of why raw numerical model output shouldn’t really be called a forecast.

The short version: global weather models run on grids of roughly 10–25 km per cell. Your city and the hills 5 km away share the same cell. Local effects — coastal fog, mountain valleys, urban heat islands — are invisible to the model. Real forecasts apply statistical corrections trained on years of local observation data. GribGrab does none of that.

He was right.

What I Did With That

First, I updated the app’s language. “Model output” instead of “forecast.” A small disclaimer. Honest framing.

Then I realised this is actually a feature for the right audience. Hikers, people outdooring a lot — people who understand weather — often prefer raw model data. They want to interpret it themselves, not get a smoothed-over summary.

Where It Is Now

About 20–30 people use it daily, mostly from Reddit posts. I’ve added city pages for SEO — early days, but a long-term bet.

No monetization yet. Growth first.

What I Learned

Build the thing that scratches your own itch. Post it publicly as soon as it’s embarrassing enough. The criticism you get will teach you a lot.

Have you checked what the weather looked like the last time your hike got rained out? → gribgrab.com