Weather Forecasts in SmartMixin

Every weather station and every saved location in SmartMixin comes with its own forecast, computed by professional weather models and refreshed automatically. This article explains where to find your forecast, how to read it, and what decides the numbers you see.

Forecasts appear in two places: summarised on the dashboard, and in full on the forecast screen.

Tip: You decide which cards appear on your dashboard and in which order. See Customizing Your Dashboard.

Open any day in the Daily forecast to see it broken down hour by hour. If you prefer a coarser view, Daily detail by periods groups those 24 hours into Night, Morning, Afternoon and Evening.

On the mobile app, the dashboard opens with a Current conditions card: the temperature right now and what it feels like.

Under the temperature is a bar showing where the current reading sits between today's coldest and warmest hour. The filled part is the stretch of that range the day has already covered; the rest is still to come. The label at each end tells you which: an extreme the day has passed reads "at" its time, and one still ahead reads "expected" at its time. So at two in the afternoon you may see the low given as reached at six in the morning, while the high is still expected at three — the warmest part of the day has not arrived yet.

On a day with no spread at all — steady fog, or unbroken cloud — there is no range to show. The bar is replaced by a single line telling you the temperature holds all day.

Wind and Gust share one cell: the large number is the average wind speed with its direction, and the line beneath it gives the strongest gust. Pressure shows an arrow when it has risen or fallen noticeably over the last three hours.

SmartMixin does not produce its own weather predictions. It serves forecasts from established meteorological models — GFS from NOAA, ECMWF, AROME from Météo France, ICON from the DWD, and others — and shows you which one you are looking at.

The model in use is named on a chip that floats in the bottom-right corner of the dashboard. Tap or click it to see the model, switch to another one, or read its details.

Which model answers for a given station depends on three things, checked in order:

1. Your subscription. Free accounts are served GFS everywhere.
2. A choice you made for that station, if you set one.
3. Your preferred models, and the fallback you picked for everywhere else.

Choosing Which Forecast Models You Get covers steps 2 and 3 in detail.

It depends on the model, and the spread is wide. GFS reaches about 16 days and ECMWF HRES 15, while the finest-grid models reach far less — AROME about two days, ICON-D2 barely more than one, HRRR under a day.

Global does not automatically mean further ahead: ARPEGE Global stops at about four days, shorter than the regional ICON-EU's five. Each model's exact reach is the Horizon line in its details.

Models are re-run on a fixed schedule — some every hour, most every six hours — and SmartMixin picks up each new run automatically. You do not need to refresh anything. To see exactly when the run you are looking at was produced, open the model's details from the forecast chip; the Run: line gives the run and how long ago it finished.

Understanding Forecast Models explains horizon, grid size and run frequency, and lists what each model is good at.

A forecast is a simulation, not a measurement. Two things follow from that, and both are normal:

• It changes between runs. Each new run starts from newer observations, so the picture for the same afternoon can shift over the days leading up to it. Shifts get smaller as the day approaches.
• Models disagree with each other. They use different physics, different grid sizes and different starting data. Disagreement between models is itself information: when they all agree, confidence is high; when they scatter, the situation is genuinely uncertain.

With a Premium subscription you can put several models side by side and judge for yourself — see Comparing Forecast Models Side by Side.

Your preferences are saved even on a free account — they simply start applying the moment you subscribe. See Premium Features and How to Subscribe.

• Understanding Forecast Models — what each model is, and what the specifications mean
• Choosing Which Forecast Models You Get — choose which models answer where
• Comparing Forecast Models Side by Side — put several models side by side