How do you get a reliable weather forecast before a session?

Atmospheric if you're in USA.

If you're in the “micro climate” that is nw England, Windows.

Ie: open them and look outside. And have a light weight rig so it's easy to run indoors with :(

In the Western United States I use Astropheric and Clear Outside together. Then I pull up the local weather on MSN Weather, click on the map, click on the clouds icon and I get the current radar picture and then move the time forecast out to see how the clouds move. Putting all these together with local knowledge of the usual daily cloud patterns I get about 98% accuracy. That last step really helps to not miss opportunities as sometimes Astropheric/Clear Outside says cloudy but the local radar shows a clear opening.

CS, Bob

dummieastro · Jul 3, 2026 at 08:43 PM

In the Western United States I use Astropheric and Clear Outside together. Then I pull up the local weather on MSN Weather, click on the map, click on the clouds icon and I get the current radar picture and then move the time forecast out to see how the clouds move. Putting all these together with local knowledge of the usual daily cloud patterns I get about 98% accuracy. That last step really helps to not miss opportunities as sometimes Astropheric/Clear Outside says cloudy but the local radar shows a clear opening.

CS, Bob

Thank you for sharing, that’s a lot of data to check. For my location in Europe I also check 3 sources - Meteoblue, ClearOutside and the Apple weather app. The satellite/radar data let me down me a couple of times, but I should probably start checking it as well to learn local patterns.

By the way, have you ever seen any website or app that combine the forecasts together?

Tony Gondola · Jul 3, 2026 at 08:14 PM

I have found Astrospheric to be the most accurate for my area here in the central US. I use Clear Sky Chart and Weather Underground for a quick check and then go to Astrospheric for a more detailed prediction.

Thanks for sharing, didn’t know about the first two. And thankfully Weather Underground supports my location.

I actually see all of them are quite detailed, does Astrospheric offer anything special that helps you?

Gamaholjad · Jul 4, 2026 at 01:27 PM

BBC weather for me pretty good really. Or I step outside and see if the clouds are rolling in . Having your own observatory means I can look outside coupled with BBC weather and be up and running in 10 minutes. Having your targets penciled in prior is key for me.

Nice, do you have an all-sky camera or a meteo station installed there?

Médéric Hébert · Jul 4, 2026 at 01:59 PM

Astrospheric for clouds, weatherCan for risk of rain. Even the slightest risk and the rig stay covered.

Thanks for sharing, that’s the second time I see people use smth different rather than AstroSpheric for rains. Any reasons for you personally?

Alex G · Jul 4, 2026, 01:10 PM

Tony Gondola · Jul 3, 2026 at 08:14 PM

I have found Astrospheric to be the most accurate for my area here in the central US. I use Clear Sky Chart and Weather Underground for a quick check and then go to Astrospheric for a more detailed prediction.

Thanks for sharing, didn’t know about the first two. And thankfully Weather Underground supports my location.

I actually see all of them are quite detailed, does Astrospheric offer anything special that helps you?

Yes it does. The seeing prediction is really useful and it also maps hour by hour, any of the parameters you want to look at. I find it to be the most detailed and accurate of the three.

I use 3 then go outside and watch even with the three accuracy is no always good

It rained down on mines few times in the years. Still there ticking…

I use the weather app on my phone, and Atmospheric Pro. And I have a weather station on my roof.

But the tie breaker is my eye on the sky.

Typically, I live under a hole in my weather. So I get a lot more clear nights than many others.

But my eye is the best predictor.

Alex G · Jul 5, 2026, 08:48 AM

SonnyE · Jul 5, 2026 at 12:23 AM

I use the weather app on my phone, and Atmospheric Pro. And I have a weather station on my roof.

But the tie breaker is my eye on the sky.

Typically, I live under a hole in my weather. So I get a lot more clear nights than many others.

But my eye is the best predictor.

I have heard that weather stations give an extremely accurate local forecast, is it true?

Not where I live, Alex. they try, but often fail in accuracy. That is why I rely on my method 3, go look.

But even that has failed me a time or 12. Our weather seems to change too fast.

My ultimate hold card is my Delete Key. Using my delete key there is no evidence of a screw up. 🤣

And I can always edit a set of images the next day, chopping off images of no value at the end of a run. Mass extinction at times. (Instead of 200 images pare it down to the last viewable image to 1xx, for example. Then stack what I’ve been given.)