What's New

The site evolves based on your feedback. Below is the list of recent changes we've made.

Wednesday, 2023.12.13

The emails for alerts are now back up. Switched the underlying provider, and hopefully this one behaves better.

Sunday, 2021.12.05

The emails for alerts are now back up. My account was being limited to only 100 emails a month, and I was blowing through that limit before I could even finish the first batch of emails to send each month.

Saturday, 2020.09.05

I am now pulling data from a different place, however, I have not been able to fully test everything yet. I know the thunderstorm forecast currently is not operational, and there may be others. It will take a bit to work through these. If you see something amiss, please let me know. Thanks for your patience.

Thursday, 2020.09.03

All my weather data comes from NOAA, and NOAA has been unavailable for a couple of weeks now (with no timeline on when it will be fixed). I am currently working on rewriting GetOutCast to pull its data from a different source. Likely will take me another day or so.

Sunday, 2020.03.15

New forecast available for thunderstorms so that you don't miss the next lightning strike. Be careful out there.

Wednesday, 2019.10.30

Completely rewritten data import from NOAA that takes 1/3 the time. Same with alert sending, which means you'll receive your alerts an hour sooner than before. Some minor cosmetic changes.

Maintaining the mobile apps has been way too much work for me so I am removing them for now, as it prevents me from adding features I want to add to the core. If you have them, you can still use them but they won't be linked from here anymore. I will come back and rebuild them again, just not right now.

Monday, 2019.02.04

Did you know that Honolulu is the largest city in the world? Its 1500 miles across because any island in Hawaii not named is automatically a part of Honolulu. Well, when GetOutCast picked a location to build a forecast it was picking on of the atolls far away of Oahu, causing the sunrise/sunset times to be off by about a half hour. This is now accounted for.

Tuesday, 2017.01.31

On some browsers, the navigation menu was off by just a hair, such that when you tried to say pick another forecast or location, the menu would disappear before your mouse could reach it. There was a 1 pixel gap between the two and unless, you moved your mouse really really fast, you could not reach it. Annoying!!! This is now fixed, and there is now a fallback should there be another browser this problem exists on; you can now just click on 'forecast' and 'location', and both will take you to a page to change them respectively. Thanks for pointing this out!

Wednesday, 2016.09.28

You can now use GetOutCast on Android. Sign up for access to the beta by visiting the play store.

Wednesday, 2016.09.07

Thank all of you for letting me know the sunrise/sunset was off for the entire east coast, it was using the wrong time zone behind the scenes.

Monday, 2016.04.18

Thank you Kristy for noticing our calculation for the blue hour was wrong, which caused some forecasts where showing there was still available light way too late at night, whoops!

Friday, 2016.02.05

Great suggestion from one of our users, having saved locations, so that you can quickly switch between your favorite locations. Add your favorite location today (coming for Windows Phone soon).

Monday, 2015.10.12

I was frustrated with how the alerts always seemed to alert at the last minute, so I've updated alerts so that you can configure how far in advance you want us to see if the conditions are just right. Simply edit your alerts to change the default 24 hours to a longer duration.

Saturday, 2015.10.10

Based on feedback, added explanations to the alerts so that there isn't as much confusion as to how they work.

A few more tweaks to the API to support the upcoming Android/iOS apps.

Thursday, 2015.09.10

Some locations with special characters in the name were breaking things from working (Port St. Lucie, looking at you). This is now fixed.

The API needed a few changes for the upcoming mobile apps (Android, iOS), these changes went out on this release.

Wednesday, 2015.08.05

Two new forecasts are available on all platforms, infrared and fireworks, thanks to your feedback. Please keep these great ideas coming!

With alerts, I was lazy in the last release and made it so the location you were currently viewing was the location used when adding an alert. Additionally, if you wished to change an alert's location, you could not. Both these problems are now solved and location can be changed on an alert as you please. So go ahead, add a new alert now.

The list of forecasts on the website was getting a bit out of hand, its been reorganized to fit better and hopefully be easier to use.

Almost all forecasts have a correction to them. There was a bug in calculating quality of light that was not accounting for the cloud cover correctly. This is fixed.

Friday, 2015.05.08

No longer do you need to constantly check the website for forecasts (goodbye traffic), let the forecasts come to you. With alerts, you can be notified when great opportunities are coming up. One less excuse for not getting your shot. So go ahead, create an alert now!

Monday, 2015.03.23

The search for locations failed to account for when searching by the actual name of the state, and only worked if you typed in the abbreviation. Now both are supported.

Thursday, 2015.02.26

A new forecast is available on all platforms for snow forecasts. Not only does this take into account whether or not its going to snow, the easy part, but it also checks the wind to ensure its not blowing the snow off tree limbs. Please let us know what you think!

The aerial/drone forecast previously only accounted for sustained winds and not gusts. Both are now factored into the forecast.

Thursday, 2015.01.29

A new forecast is available on all platforms for aerial/drone/quadcopter forecasts. This forecast leans heavily on finding the best conditions to fly with slight favoring for desirable light. Please let us know what you think!

Friday, 2015.01.23

The last release made it difficult for some recently signed up users to log in. This fixes that trouble.

Tuesday, 2015.01.20

Forecast pages are now printer friendly for those of you who like to print out the forecasts ahead of time.

The next major feature to be released is alerts. Soon, you'll be able to get alerted when say the conditions are perfect in Callao, VA for sunset tomorrow. Now you won't miss great opportunities. This release includes some of the ground work to make this happen.

Wednesday, 2014.12.17

Whoops, my fix for Alaska broke a lot of the other forecasts. They all are happy now, sorry about that!

Monday, 2014.12.15

There are a number of locations in Alaska where the sun never rises or sets, this caused my logic to blow up. Code updated to support these scenarios so that forecasts work here.

Friday, 2014.10.24

This has been driving me nuts for awhile, not getting redirected back to where I just was when asked to login/register ... finally, a feature, embodied by every site created in the last decade, reaches GetOutCast. Better late than never?

Monday, 2014.10.06

Many of the features added over the last month had not made their way to the mobile app yet. This brings the two in-line. The mobile app now has quick access to seeing the best time each day and across days. Additionally, it now shows daily averages to help compare days. Finally, it includes a number of UI tweaks to clean things up a bit.

Thursday, 2014.09.11

New forecast for architectural photography. This forecast primarily looks at the cloud cover, time of day, and amount of wind to generate a forecast for what hours best work for architectural photography. As always, Thanks for the feedback, we truly appreciate any feedback.

Tuesday, 2014.09.09

Most hourly forecasts have their algorithm updated to give better comparisons between hours. Some, like the waterfalls, portrait, and macro in particular were largely the same every day. This will better show differences.

Most hourly forecasts updated so that the icon/description text better represents the score. Many times in the past it might say something negative when the score was a positive one as well as the inverse.

Monday, 2014.06.23

New insights helping you discover which time to get out and capture life works best. Forecasts now show the best time left today, the best time over the coming week along with the daily average letting you know which day gives the best bet.

Adjusted all hourly daytime forecasts so that there was no rating shown for when it was nighttime (blue hour still shows a value though). These really were not good times, and they messed up the new 'best bets' as often times 2AM would show as the best time to shoot the clouds, which it clearly is not.

Tonight now switches to the next day once day break hits instead of after noon.

Friday, 2014.05.30

The forecasts for astrophotography and the moon are difficult to read when broken down by day, so now they are broken down by night, so you can see an entire night together instead of split across two different lines.

Thanks to feedback from you, I've added wind to the forecasts for astrophotography and the moon. No one wants soft photos. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

Now its easier to determine what current conditions are as all hours prior to right now are grayed out.

Fixed astrophotography forecast bug where the hours adjacent to sunrise/sunset sometimes incorrectly stated that the sun was still out.

Wednesday, 2014.04.30

We are working on expanding beyond the borders of the United States. I am very grateful to one of our users who pointed out that our use of zip/postal code to identify locations does not always work outside of the United States. This release changes how all of the site is organized to support locations across the world without the use of zip codes (but uses city, state and country). This was a pretty big effort, so please let us know if you see anything not working properly. Thank you for your help!

Friday, 2014.04.11

I was recently out in the Apostle Islands shooting the infamous ice caves and had no idea what the zip code for where they were. The search for locations has been much improved, no longer do you need to have an exact match to a city name, only a partial match is required. Additionally, the mobile app gains this search capability in addition to a 'locate me' option to use the GPS for find the current zip code.

Thursday, 2014.03.27

Our blog is now tied to FeedBurner, allowing you to easily follow us using the feed tool of your choice.

For hourly forecasts, its difficult to easily determine when the sun is out (or if its night time). Added subtle coloring to the live tile to help with distinguishing this (does not require an update to the mobile app ~ this is available immediately to everyone).

Support behind the scenes to support finding locations (postal codes) easily through the phone. I was recently photographing the ice caves in Wisconsin, and was annoyed I had to separately look up the postal code before I could use my app.

Friday, 2014.03.14

New forecasts for portrait and macro photography (which are surprisingly similar in requirements), please let us know what you think. Note, in the Windows Phone app, if you do not see these listed, use the refresh button at the bottom of the forecast selection screen. Also, no new version of app is needed, these new forecasts are automatically added to all of the versions of the app that already support more than one forecast.

Hourly live tiles now show the icon along with the bar and score. (Note: this change will automatically show up the next time the live tile updates)

Wednesday, 2014.02.26

New design that uses bars to show how great a particular condition is instead of difference in color. Applies to forecasts as well as the details (to match the mobile app).

New color scheme that should be a bit easier on the eyes. Or so says my wife.

New view, chart, that allows comparing across days to be easier, landscape orientation support, and UI improvements.

More details and comparisons can be found at the latest blog post, The wife approved release.

Monday, 2014.02.17

Updated releases to show all platforms, not just the website (so that you can better see where we are spending our time).

Updated live tile for hourly forecasts to show the next few hours forecast instead of the first few hours of each day

Added new data to forecasts for new features coming to both the website and the mobile app.

Wednesday, 2014.02.12

Major overhaul of app. Now supports all forecasts. New detailed view showing how the forecast score was created. The app is now equivalent to the website in terms of information available. However, I find the live tile a killer feature.

Thursday, 2014.01.23

Yikes, that last release was not pretty. This release fixes all the coding mistakes I must have done in my sleep. Sorry about that.

Monday, 2014.01.20

Global improvement to all forecast algorithms that will make good chances stick out a little better.

Added links to our social pages and fixed some mobile display issues.

A number of changes to support upcoming release of Windows Phone app (support for forecasts other than sunrise/sunset)

Friday, 2014.01.10

Performance improvements to improve response time.

Wednesday, 2014.01.01

We now have our first mobile app in the Windows Phone app store.

Thursday, 2013.12.12

A few bugfixes and laid groundwork for some new features coming hopefully by the end of the year.

Sunday, 2013.12.01

There were a number of display issues with the new mobile design, these should now be resolved.

Tuesday, 2013.11.19

I was always checking the site from my phone and I noticed most of you were as well. Unfortunately, the existing site was a bit cumbersome on a mobile device. Now, all pages have a mobile friendly view (if your phone does not automatically switch to this new layout, there is a link at the bottom of the page to switch between the mobile friendly and desktop versions of the site).

Some of the forecasts were displaying the wrong information in certain situations (like stating it was clear, yet it was overcast). The actual forecast was correct, but the detailed information was displaying incorrectly.

Friday, 2013.10.25

Added the ability to update any of your account information. Provided better feedback when logging in and registering when something was not quite right.

Monday, 2013.10.21

New forecast added, waterfall. This will predict these best times to capture a silky smooth waterfall, or any other long exposure of water.

LastUpdatedUtc cloud forecast to take into account additional factors, temperature and humidity.

New logo and slightly modified look. Performance improvements so that all pages load more quickly. Minor bugfixes.

Sunday, 2013.09.22

New forecast added, Landscape. This will predict these best times to capture an expansive outdoor landscape.

All forecasts received significant updates to their algorithms. Includes adding new factors as well as adjustments to the weights of the factors.

Massive rework of how forecasts are created so that we can add new forecasts more easily.

Wednesday, 2013.08.14

Added list of releases in What's New detailing changes to the site.

Saturday, 2013.07.13

Detailed help information added to all pages.

Improvements to SEO in terms of redirects.

Wednesday, 2013.06.19

The last location visited now is stored so that when you return the next time, you will automatically see forecasts for that location instead of the default, Richmond, Virginia.

Typing in usernames and passwords are annoying, so now you can log in or register via Facebook.

Adjusted forecast algorithm on fog to better predict fog (previously was forecasting it too often).

Thursday, 2013.06.13

New forecast added, fog. This forecast helps predict the chances of seeing ground or radiation fog.

Sunrise/Sunset forecast now has an alert notifying you when the chances for fog during sunrise or sunset are high

On hourly forecasts, the lighting conditions (day, night, sunrise/sunset) are now displayed for each hour allowing you to easily see where the hours of good light are available.

Saturday, 2013.06.08

Added two new forecasts, one for the conditions for photographing the moon and the other for forecasting the stars and anything else in the night sky (when the moon is not present).

SEO improvements to invalid URLs, H1s, and 404s. Improvements to caching of CSS/JS files.

Thursday, 2013.05.30

Fixed bug where forecasts showed extra an extra day of forecasts when there was insufficient data available. Additionally fixed bug where the first day's forecast was missing an hour.

Thursday, 2013.05.02

Improved forecasts granularity from every three hours to hourly.

Fixed forecasts for locations with invalid time zone information. Fixed bug where locations with multiple names were broken. Minor SEO improvements.

Thursday, 2013.04.04

Initial site launched with forecasts for sunrise/sunset, and clouds (later to named sky).