Create a weather channel for your city using @ifttt

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I’ve become slightly addicted to the wonderful If This Then That (ifttt). In essence, ifttt is a way to put the internet to work for you by creating tasks that fit this simple structure: if this then that. For example:

TThere’s tons of ifttt Channels (DropBox, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and more) which define Triggers and Actions, the basic building blocks for creating ifttt tasks.

I thought it would be interesting to have a play about with ifttt tasks and I came up with @WeegieWeather – an ifttt powered weather channel for Glasgow. This ifttt powered twitter account tweets when certain parameters are met, utilising the Yahoo Weather Channel as a trigger. So you’ll get a tweet to let you know if it’s going to be snowing tomorrow, if it’s about to turn to rain in the afternoon, if it’s bikini weather tomorrow, if it’s going to be clear skies and so on. I’ve added a fair few weather triggers so weegies need never get caught without an umbrella or sun cream again.

I take no responsibility for the accuracy of the tweets as they’re powered by Yahoo Weather not me. Don’t moan to me that your picnik at Kelvingrove Park got rained upon if the tweets said it was clear skies.

A rather nice ifttt trigger/action I’ve set up means the @WeatherWeather twitter avatar should always reflect the weather right now in Glasgow. I used Creative Commons images for this:

Glasgow_clear_square
Glasgow_cloudy_square
Glasgow_rain_square
Glasgow_snow_square

Clear day (squinty bridge) shot by Andrew Rennie.

Cloudy day (Clydeport crane) shot by Kristian Dela Cour.

Rainy day (Gibson St umbrella) shot by Neil H.

Snowy day (Glasgow uni) shot by Ian Dick.

Anyone can create their own weather channel for their city based upon the ifttt recipes I’ve shared. I’d love feedback on this and I’m especially interested to hear from other people using ifttt.

 

  • http://twitter.com/EarthyAndroid EarthyAndroid

    Nice one. I’ve a recipe up there too from last autumn which semi-automates blog content from Google Alerts – http://ifttt.com/recipes/352 – waiting for them to add G+ functions :-)

  • http://twitter.com/Moptopp Moptopp

    Thanks for the head’s up Ross. This is so clever, I can see my weekend disappearing into a haze of if this then that-ness! I bet it there’s a few recipes that could be cooked up that would be really great for use in the third sector too. *puts on apron*

  • Mark

    What happens when Rain & Snow are predicred for tomorrow? Do you get two tweets? (you do if you set up one trigger for rain and one for cloudy, since these two conditions are met together).