How Use Email Weather
Standard Email
InReach
- Limitations
Forecast Request
Position
Format
- Short
- Long
Email Weather Service User Manual
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Disclaimer and License

This experimental service is provided free to community, and the contributors to this project do not accept any legal responsibility for the quality of the forecasts that are provided, or the quality of service on offer.

Use this service/software at your own risk, and at your own expense, there may be unexpected innacuracies, bugs or service interruptions. Some satellite communication services charge per message, care has been taken to reduce the number and length of messages, and to prevent accidental overuse, however the contributors accept no responsibility for unexpected expenses resulting from the use of this service/software.

It is highly recommended to cross-check forecasts provided by this service with other sources of information to help make the most informed judgement about weather conditions in your area. Weather data is currently provided by Open-Meteo.com under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This software is open source (available on GitHub) and licensed under the MIT Software License.

How Use Email Weather

Using the Email Weather Service is simple, you just need to send an email to email.weather.service@gmail.com . The subject of the email can be anything, it can be helpful to use a name for which you are retrieving the forecast. The contents of the email body depends on which service you are using to send your email.

Standard Email

For any standard email account, you will need to at least provide the requested position in the body of your email as part of the forecast request. For example to obtain the forecast for London, you can enter the following text in your email body, which is requested forecast position in latitude,longitude format:

You can then expect to receive a response similar to:

See Forecast Request section for more information on what you can request in a forecast.

InReach

If you are sending an email from an InReach communication device, and you elect to wait for GPS signal before sending the message, you do not need to include the position in the forecast request, this service will use the position of your device reported at the time the message was sent to obtain the forecast for your location. However, if you want to obtain the forecast for a different location, you can include the position in the forecast request.

Limitations

Using the InReach with this service currently has the following limitations:

Forecast Request

The forecast request is specified in the body of email that you send to email.weather.service@gmail.com with a specific syntax which is described in the subsequent sections of this document. Please ensure that you use only plain text, don't apply formatting or HTML email signatures to your mail if possible to ensure maximum compatibility with the service.

Position

Position for the requested forecast is specified using latitude,longitude format.

The position always needs to be in the first position of your request. For instance, here is a position in combination with a Format Detail.


Format

There are many options available for you to customise the format of the forecast message you will receive. The format specification is specified preceding with an M, followed by the specification. The default format is MS Short.

Short

Short format (MS) produces a forecast message which is extremely short, optimised for use with satellite communciation devices like the InReach.

While it may appear cryptic at first, the response is fairly easy to understand.

The first line takes the format:

Timezone Forecast Elevation (meters) Terrain Elevation (meters)
TzGMTFE33TE34

Subsequent lines which form the forecast take the format:

Time (day T hour) WMO Weather Code Freezing Level (meters/100) Wind (speed kmh/10 @ direction °/10) Precipitation (mm cummulative since previous entry)
04T03C3F7W1@3P0
04T09C53F6W1@9P1

The WMO 4677 Present Weather Code is a 1 or 2 digit number representing the state of the weather:

CodeDescription
0clear sky
1mainly clear
2partly cloudy
3overcast
45fog
48fog depositing rime
51light drizzle
53moderate drizzle
55dense drizzle
56light freezing drizzle
57dense freezing drizzle
61slight rain
63moderate rain
65heavy rain
66light freezing rain
67heavy freezing rain
71slight snow
73moderate snow
75heavy snow
77snow grains
80slight rain showers
81moderate rain showers
82violent rain showers
85slight snow showers
86heavy snow showers
95slight or moderate thunderstorm
96slight thunderstorm with hail
99heavy thunderstorm with hail

Long

With the Long format (ML) specified, the email will produce a more detailed forecast report, the default long format type is the HTML Format (MLH), the H is optional.


HTML

The long HTML format (MLH) produces both a detailed plain text and HTML version of the forecast report, included in the same email. Depending on your email client configuration either the plain text, or html version will be displayed.

Plain

The long plain format (MLP) produces a detailed plain text version of the forecast report. Some email clients have trouble displaying it nicely, so you may be better off with the Long HTML format instead.