Whoever designed it doesn't understand the concept of daily max/min temperatures, and the daily low presented in the app is the lowest during that calendar day, rather than the forecast overnight low following the day. It drives me absolutely mad, because I can never reliably determine how cold it will get overnight without going into the hourly view (and even that could be inaccurate for fast-moving weather systems).
It's also worth noting that the midnight-to-midnight scheme is a lot more well-defined than the alternative we're both advocating. What do you show as the low temperature for today if it's currently 3am and the temperature isn't going to drop until 3am tomorrow? If that temperature drop is displayed as today's low temperature, then I won't be able to discern whether it will get cold during this night (i.e. today between 1am and 7am) or the following night (i.e. between 7pm today and 7am tomorrow). Not to mention that cold systems can move in at any time, and it may be much colder at noon tomorrow than 3am tomorrow, so in many case "overnight low" isn't even what you care about.
But the broader point is that the utility of an overnight temperature is that it happens while most people are sleeping, and thus unable to respond to it.
Fluctuations while one is awake can be coped with.
IMHO, the most reasonable intuitive measures would be: overnight low, rain during the midnight-to-midnight day
Really anywhere where temperatures change frequently for reasons other than the time of day. Probably the vast majority of people who use temperature forecasts in consumer weather apps.
> But the broader point is that the utility of an overnight temperature is that it happens while most people are sleeping, and thus unable to respond to it.
> Fluctuations while one is awake can be coped with.
I couldn't disagree more. Surely the most common use case by far for quick checks of the daily forecast is simply to decide what to wear when you leave the house in the morning. If you're unhoused, or camping, or you work at night, or you're a gardener, then of course overnight temperature forecasts are also vital.
And the entire state of Colorado. It is not that uncommon for our daily high to be at 12am, or for the temperature to drop 30F between a midday high and dusk as a front moves in.
These aren't conditions you can describe with just two temperature points, no matter where they are anchored.
For overnight temperatures, many people just want badging to know if there is a frost/freeze condition - e.g., is there a weather condition they need to deal with while they would otherwise be sleeping.
> Day 58°↑ • Night 48°↓
Maybe the arrows are used to indicate the high and low?
In the case of Apple, Cupertino is a pretty boring weather locale. Sometimes you need to zipper your coat and once in awhile it rains.
Which also explains why iPhone headphone wires get brittle in moderately cold weather, and iPhones go into thermal shutdown mode at temperatures that are common in places like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and the non-Bay Area parts of California.
Is the alternative you described standard?
Apple's weather app shows a low of ~40f.
In almost all cases the coldest part of the day is right around dawn. That also happens to be the time of day when most of us are first leaving the house. That's a pretty important piece of information to have and it isn't there at a glance.
Probably true, and yet the counterexamples are when the temperature forecast is particularly important when I'm choosing what to wear. Any simplification of the temperature forecast into daily lows and highs will fail certain use cases, so I think it's very reasonable to make the daily lows and highs as well- and simply-defined as possible and provide an hourly forecast so that people can also check for the potential edge cases.
I don't see any defensible opinion to let the lows be during/before sunrise.
Can’t you just check Friday’s temps? I’m not sure why you’d expect this info out of Thursday.
The daily low is the lowest temp of the day. It could very well be in the future. But it’s certainly not in the next day, and it’s not from a specific hour. If you want to see tomorrow mornings temps look at tomorrow’s hourly temps.
Do you expect the daily high to work the same? So maybe at 4pm it’s down from the daily high and now it shows today’s high is actually some temp around 3pm tomorrow?
I get what you’re saying but in no way is that a daily high. More like a next 24 hour high but even then, do you want that? That means if it’s 80F at 3pm today and 90F at 3pm tomorrow and it’s 3pm, then the high will be 90.
It’s much easier to just accurately categorize these by day/hour and let the user find what they care about instead of warping definitions to anticipate certain use cases.
Weather is not divided by some arbitrary time humans created. Max and min temperatures occur overwhelmingly in their respective day and night cycle. Adding some arbitrary cut off point in the middle of those cycles just makes comprehending max/min temps unnecessarily more difficult then it needs to be.
What if we set the calendar day to change at midday, would we start reporting max temps up to 12pm, past 12pm? How useful do you think that info would be?
People are interested in the overnight minimum, not a confusing minimum that could be either early morning or just before midnight depending on the weather at the time.