Most weather apps show you a model's estimate. Fat Tail shows you what's actually happening — live readings from calibrated airport sensors near you, the same data pilots trust before takeoff, decoded for everyone.
Every reading in Fat Tail comes from a real instrument at a real airport — professionally maintained, continuously calibrated, updated the moment conditions change. You see which station it came from, how far away it is, and how fresh the observation is. Pull down to refresh and a green sweep wipes the screen — new readings, straight from the field. When it's raining, Fat Tail says so — because a sensor six miles away is getting wet.
Temperature, feels-like, wind, gusts, humidity, visibility, pressure, and cloud layers — big, bold, and straight from the source. Conditions rated with aviation color codes: green when it's clear, red when it's rough.
Animated NOAA radar centered on you — a full hour of measured frames, five minutes apart, with a tappable timeline. Real returns from real radar sites, nothing synthesized.
Enable the compass and the wind arrow tracks as you turn — always pointing the true direction the wind is moving, like holding a hand compass.
Hourly and 7-day forecasts from the National Blend of Models — the multi-model blend NWS forecasters themselves start from. Tap any hour or day to expand the full detail.
Every reading shows where it's headed — temperature, wind, and pressure trends measured over the last three hours. When pressure falls fast, Fat Tail tells you the weather is likely turning, before the radar shows a thing.
When conditions change fast enough, stations transmit special unscheduled reports. Fat Tail flags them the moment they appear — a built-in "something is happening right now" signal no model-based app has.
No accounts. No ads. No analytics. Your location is used on-device to find nearby stations and never stored, shared, or sold.
Every screen ends with the raw station transmission — and every chunk of it is tappable. Tap "BKN035" and learn it means broken clouds at 3,500 feet. By week two, you'll read METARs like a pilot.
A METAR is the standardized weather report that airports transmit — temperature, wind, visibility, pressure, and cloud layers, measured by calibrated sensors and updated at least hourly (and immediately when conditions change fast). It's the data pilots check before every flight. Fat Tail decodes it into plain English — and lets you tap any part of the raw code to learn what it means.
Most weather apps show a model's estimate interpolated for your location. Fat Tail shows measurements from a physical instrument at a nearby airport — you see which station it came from, how far away it is, and how fresh the reading is. When it's raining, Fat Tail says so, because a sensor a few miles away is getting wet.
It's confidence times coverage — roughly, the odds that measurable rain falls at any given point in the area during the period. In a Florida summer it usually means scattered storms will pop somewhere; your spot has about a 40% shot of being under one. Fat Tail shows the forecast probability and the measured reality side by side — and when the station reports rain, the measurement wins the screen.
No. No accounts, no ads, no analytics, no servers. Your location is used on your device to find nearby stations and is never stored, shared, or sold. The App Store privacy label reads "Data Not Collected" — because there's nothing to collect.
Observations come from NOAA's Aviation Weather Center (the METAR network). Forecasts come from the National Weather Service's National Blend of Models. Radar imagery is NOAA NEXRAD served via Iowa State Mesonet. All public, all taxpayer-funded, all straight from the source.