I kept missing the good stuff (fog, aurora, beautiful sunsets) because I wasn't checking forecasts at the right time, so I built PhotoWeather...

You define rules like: `aurora_quality > 60 AND cloud_cover < 20% AND moon_below_horizon` `fog_prob > 70% AND within 30min of sunrise AND wind < 5 mph`

When a rule matches, you get an email and/or an iCal event. The iCal feed is the part I am maybe most proud of: subscribe once and upcoming "shoot windows" show up in your calendar.

One example that made me sure this wasn't just a toy: last October it alerted "clear skies + no moon + strong aurora" and I drove to a nearby high spot in Helsinki. Ended up catching aurora and Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in one frame: https://reddit.com/r/Finland/comments/1obc5nz/

Not my best photo ever, but probably the most unique and memorable, and I'll continue to remember my real-life "photoweather actually works" moment through it.

A few things that differentiates this from your average weather app:

Spatial sampling A single forecast coordinate often isn't representative of what you'll actually see. So for many scores I sample 24 points around the location (8 directions × 3 distances). Rainbow probability is a good example – it checks for rain in the antisolar direction and clear sky toward the sun.

Derived scores Photography-specific scores like fog probability use actual meteorology: dewpoint spread, vapor pressure deficit, with guard clauses (wind >6m/s disperses fog, so score drops to zero).

Data / stack Open-Meteo as the primary model; GFS for multi-point sampling and cross-checks; GEFS for ensemble clouds; GFS Wave for sea conditions; NOAA OVATION + SWPC/Kp for aurora; CAMS aerosols. FastAPI + Postgres + Celery/Redis + React/TypeScript.

Free tier is usable but tuned for low running cost; paid unlocks mainly more locations and rules, more specialized weather data and faster refreshes.

Landing page: https://photoweather.app | Demo dashboard: https://app.photoweather.app/demo/live-demo

Would love to hear feedback, especially things like:

Would you actually use this? Does the UI/UX make sense (I feel a bit blinded by building+being a user at the same time)? Is there anything that would make it more useful/usable for you?

Securing MCP Infrastructure

Nokia went from iPhone victim to $1B Nvidia deal

Fountain pens are enjoying a revival among the digital generation

One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household

Starlink 2025 Progress Report

Dembrandt – Extract Design Systems in Seconds

Corroded: Illegal Rust

Shipping publicly taught me more than months of "preparing to launch"

Show HN: I built a weather alert system for photographers

AI and Open Source: A Maintainer's Take (End of 2025)

An LLM-Driven Multi-Agent Framework for Telescope Proposal Peer Review

Instagram boss says the platform's polished feed is 'dead' thanks to AI

The Accountability Trap: Why School Systems Abandon Gifted Students

We've made an Open Source video platform

Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason (2023) [pdf]

Destroying x86_64 instruction decoders with differential fuzzing

Games in PostScript [pdf]

Brazil's largest lottery prize ever delayed due to 125k bets per second

The NYC subway station chosen for Mamdani's swearing-in

Snoop Project Update (search for usernames on 5k websites)

A Declaration of Interdependence

Clojure: Transducers

Real-life experiment shows Bohr was right in theoretical debate with Einstein

Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them

China's first real gaming GPU is here, benchmarks are brutal

The Graphics Chip Chronicles

Nvidia to buy AI21 Labs for $3B

Scientists Create Robotic Rabbits to Fight Invasive Burmese Pythons in Florida

Veritasium: The Ridiculous Engineering of ASML Machine [video]

Fixing a Buffer Overflow in Unix v4 Like It's 1973

Bulk image conversion client-side using Web Workers