Omega Tau Weather iOS App

Use this app if you want relevant readable weather information without distractions. The Omega Tau Weather universal application (otau) shows easily readable data in night or day for the current weather conditions and forecasts, a clock with sunrise, sunset, moon rise and moon set times, and GPS speed, direction and location. This app emphasizes your personal informatics capability with a high “signal to noise” ratio from a clean readable interface and no ads. Weather and other metrics are shown in English units.

weather on iphone
For night use, the red text on a black background mode provides high contrast for dark adaptation and sleep hygiene.

It takes several minutes for your eyes to fully adapt to seeing in the dark, and as you get older it usually takes longer.  The cone receptors in your eye can read with red light which minimally interferes with your rod receptors that allow you to see in the dark (see Purkinje Effect).  Also, by using red on black and not using colors with a blue element, such as white, that can suppress melatonin,  this mode supports sleep hygiene.  This red on black mode may prove useful for night workers, hikers, etc.

The user can select the current location, or use the keyboard to type or dictate a different city in the text entry area to get weather data for that location.  The weather and GPS data display can be scrolled in portrait or landscape to view more text detail for forecasts, and can be pinched to zoom in or out for readability.

The following information is shown:

Time Cluster for current location

  • Time
  • Sunrise
  • Mid-point of Sun
  • Sunset
  • Moonrise
  • Moon percent illumination
  • Moonset

Speed Cluster for current location with direction of travel

  • Speed and Direction mph degrees from north
  • Latitude
  • Longitude
  • Altitude

Temperature Cluster for current or entered location

  • Current Temperature
  • Maximum Temperature
  • Feels Like Temperature
  • Minimum Temperature

Weather Cluster for current or entered location

  • Weather Icon
  • Barometer level and trend
  • Humidity
  • Wind Direction and Speed

Environmental Cluster (US EPA Cities only)

  • U.S. Air Quality Index in PM 2.5
  • Ozone Levels
  • Solar Radiation
  • Ultraviolet

Forecast Text

  • Current Day/Evening
  • Tomorrow Day/Evening
  • Third Day/Evening
  • Fourth Day/Evening
For daytime use, the red text on a white background mode provides for excellent readability in bright conditions.

Buttons can be used to set white or black background, send an email with weather and location information or copy weather to paste into another app, or look up a wikipedia entry for the current location text entry.  Prior location entries can be selected using back and forth arrows to reduce typing.