Getting Started — YAWA NOAA for iOS

Quick start

1
Allow location access
YAWA needs your location to fetch conditions from the nearest NOAA observation station. Choose While Using the App or Always (required for background notifications). You can adjust this anytime in iOS Settings.
2
Read your current conditions
The top card shows temperature, sky condition, humidity, wind, pressure, and dew point sourced from the nearest NWS observation station. A data-quality badge appears if the reading is older than 60 minutes or has flagged sensor values.
3
Check the forecast
Scroll down to see a 7-day forecast, hourly breakdown, and air quality index — all automatically loaded for your location.
4
Explore radar
Tap the radar card or the radar button to open the full-screen animated radar map. Tap play to watch recent precipitation. Pan and pinch to zoom.
5
Save locations
Tap the location button (top of the home screen) to manage favorites. Saved locations let you quickly switch between home, work, or family — no GPS required for those views.

What's in the app

🌡 Current conditions

Live data from the nearest NWS station — temp, humidity, wind, pressure, and dew point.

📅 7-day forecast

Daily highs and lows, sky conditions, and chance of precipitation from the NWS grid.

⏱ Hourly forecast

Hour-by-hour temperature and precipitation outlook from Open-Meteo.

✨ Forecast summaries

Optionally condense the detailed day and night forecast into a short, friendly line — on-device with Apple Intelligence.

💨 Air quality

US AQI and PM2.5 readings updated every 30 minutes from Open-Meteo.

🔔 Weather alerts

Active NWS alerts shown inline and delivered as push notifications for saved locations.

📡 Radar

Animated RainViewer radar tiles. Play, pause, pan, and pinch-to-zoom.

🌅 Sun times

Sunrise and sunset calculated locally — no extra network request needed.

📲 Daily briefing

An opt-in notification that summarises today's or tonight's forecast at your chosen time.

📍 Favorites

Save any location and tap to switch. Tap the star in the radar view to save a radar center.

🏠 Home label

Set your home coordinates. YAWA labels your location "Home" when you're within 100 m.

🟦 Widget

A small home-screen widget shows your latest temperature and conditions at a glance.

🎨 Appearance

Choose YAWA's themed (navy) look or system colors. Light, dark, or follow the system.

Feature details

Data quality badge

YAWA checks every observation for sensor flags and staleness before displaying it. A badge on the current-conditions card indicates the reading quality:

Good — observation is fresh and all sensor values passed NWS quality control.
Estimated — one or more values were flagged or interpolated by the station.
Stale — the latest observation is more than 60 minutes old; YAWA may be showing the last available reading.

If a station is offline or has no recent data, YAWA automatically tries the next-nearest station.

Weather alerts

Active NWS alerts for your location appear at the top of the home screen. To receive push notifications for a saved location:

Go to Settings → Alerts and enable Weather alert notifications.
Grant notification permission when prompted.
YAWA checks for new alerts in the background and notifies you once per alert version.

⚠️ Background alert checks depend on iOS scheduling your app's refresh task. Delivery is best-effort and may be delayed when Low Power Mode is active.

Radar

The radar view plays the last ~90 minutes of NOAA radar tiles from RainViewer. Playback starts with the most recent frame and progressively loads older frames in the background, so animation begins immediately and reaches further back in time as frames cache.

Play / pause — tap the button in the bottom-right corner.
Pan — drag to move the map. Playback pauses automatically.
Zoom — pinch to zoom in or out.
Recenter — tap the crosshair button to return to the original location.
Save location — tap the location name at the top to add the current map center to your favorites.
Opacity — adjust the radar overlay strength in Settings → Radar.

Daily briefing notification

YAWA can deliver a concise weather summary once a day at a time you choose — without requiring you to open the app.

Go to Settings → Daily Briefing and enable the toggle.
Set your preferred delivery time.
Notifications sent before 5:00 PM show today's high, conditions, and chance of rain.
Notifications at 5:00 PM or later switch to tonight's low and overnight outlook.
Any active NWS alert is always appended.

💡 The briefing content is built from the last forecast YAWA fetched — either when you opened the app or during a background refresh overnight. Open the app at least once after enabling the feature so your location is cached.

Forecast summaries Optional

Tap any day in the forecast to open its detailed day-and-night narrative. YAWA can rewrite that narrative into a short, friendly summary that's quicker to skim — while keeping the temperature, chance of precipitation, and any storm timing.

Turn it on in Settings → Forecast Summaries with the Summarize forecasts toggle. It is off by default.
On devices that support Apple Intelligence, summaries are generated entirely on your device — no forecast data ever leaves it. Devices without on-device AI show the original National Weather Service wording instead.
A small Summarized by Apple Intelligence note appears beneath a summarized forecast.
If a forecast runs long, tap it to expand the full text; tap again to collapse. The trailing … is the cue.
When a summary can't be produced, YAWA shows the original National Weather Service wording instead.

⚠️ Summaries are a readability aid generated by an AI model. For exact wording and timing, the official NWS forecast is always the source of record.

Favorites and location switching

Save any location to your favorites list for quick access. To add a location:

Tap the location button at the top of the home screen.
Search for a city, or tap the map to drop a pin.
Tap Add to Favorites.

To switch locations, tap the location button and select any saved favorite. To return to GPS, select Current Location.

Alert notifications are sent for up to 3 monitored favorites. The most recently viewed favorites are monitored first.

Home location

Setting a Home location lets YAWA label your GPS position "Home" when you are within 100 meters of it — useful when you have a favorite with the same address.

Go to Settings → Home and tap Set Home to Current Location while standing at home.
To clear it, tap Clear Home.

Widget

YAWA's small home-screen widget displays the latest temperature and condition icon. It reads the last snapshot written by the main app — no independent network calls. To keep it current, open the app periodically so the snapshot is refreshed.

To add the widget: long-press your home screen → tap + → search for YAWA.

Appearance

YAWA offers two style modes, each with independent light/dark control:

Themed — YAWA's custom navy sky gradient with frosted-glass cards.
System — standard iOS semantic colors that blend with your device theme.

Within each mode, choose Light, Dark, or System (follows iOS) in Settings → Appearance.

Tips

ℹ️ All weather data comes from official US government sources — NOAA, NWS, and the National Weather Service API. YAWA requires no account, no subscription, and no API key.

💡 If current conditions look stale, pull to refresh or tap the refresh button. YAWA will try the next-nearest station automatically if the closest one is offline.

💡 The forecast is sourced from the NWS gridpoint API and reflects the same data shown on weather.gov for your exact location.

⚠️ YAWA is designed for locations within the United States and US territories served by the National Weather Service.