Amateur meteorologists unite: Cumul.us is a new collaborative attempt at weather forecasting that draws on user submitted data as well as traditional data from meteorological services — think of it, as its founder so nicely punned, as "the wisdom of the clouds." We've had our eye on this since it was announced last month, but now the site is finally live.
When you first land on Cumul.us it'll give a forecast/prediction for Seattle, but clicking the link for Seattle reveals a drop-down menu to enter your location. From there you can see the official forecast as well as any user submitted info. You'll also find links to RSS feed for both.
Cumul.us also reports on clothing choices submitted by users and there's a field where you can input your own choices like "winter coat" and "pants," which would be my recommendation here in Athens today. Cumul.us seems to have some sort of default clothing settings based on official temperature predictions since no one has submitted any data for my area, but there's still clothing suggestions.
At the moment the site doesn't have much in way of user submitted data, but it just launched yesterday so it'll take some time. It's tempting to dismiss Cumul.us as somewhat ridiculous, but given that most "authoritative" forecasts are often wrong anyway, Cumul.us could evolve into something truly useful — at the very worst it probably isn't going to be any less accurate than the weather person on TV.
[via Kottke]
