In 2019 WeatherWatch.co.nz launched a new website and it’s the biggest weather data dump in NZ history: www.RuralWeather.co.nz.

The new website gives people all over the country the power of weather data, allowing for a much clearer and deeper understanding of incoming weather trends and patterns, particularly useful for farmers, gardeners, market growers, surfers, pilots…and of course, every day weather nerds!

We’ve included trends for dew-point, which helps with fog forecasting (and yes city/town folk, you can use our new Fog Forecaster in the main centres too if you’re about to fly somewhere!). We also have air pressure trends, rainfall figures, frost forecasting and much more – and it’s all incredibly granular and specific to where you live.

RuralWeather.co.nz is still in beta testing and we’re fine tuning the accuracy of some of our new products but we want your feedback on how you find it. Please note, loading times for some – due to the incredible amount of data we are making available – may be a little slow first time you visit (10 seconds to load). We’re aiming to make a second round of improvements to the site in the first half of 2020, which should speed things up further.

“This is a biggest shift in New Zealand based forecasting services since WeatherWatch.co.nz first launched over a decade ago” says WeatherWatch CEO and head forecaster Philip Duncan. “It’s about bringing international standards into NZ seeing as our own Government forecasters refuse to openly share data that all taxpayers are forced to fund. This new rural website helps move the country forward as more weather data available means more smart decisions can be made which is always better for our people and economy” says Duncan.

For now the new rural weather service is entirely free and in time there may be paid services to remove advertising and open up extra benefits, including real time lightning strikes in your area and one day even local high res rain radar. We’re also working on an app version of the website, which we hope to have available later this year.

RuralWeather.co.nz also has data powered by IBM’s Watson Supercomputer, which in our most remote parts of the country auto-learns from mistakes, meaning each season the forecast data gets even more accurate for your very local area.

Check it out, have a play, bookmark it, get hooked on it – and give us your feedback!!  www.RuralWeather.co.nz

*This press release was originally published in August 2019.