Show HN: Weather2Geo – Geolocate screenshots from weather widgets
5 comments
·May 27, 2025progbits
Do you plan to scrape the data and maintain a historical database so old screenshots can be used too?
Would be really cool but I imagine it could be difficult to get past rate limits.
Elliott-Diy
That’s actually an end goal! I’m thinking of setting up a system to crowdsource this: if people opt in, the tool could cache the weather data it pulls and share it to help build a distributed historical dataset.
tgv
There are meteorological services with open data access: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/, https://english.knmidata.nl/open-dat, https://climatedataportal.metoffice.gov.uk/
Mapping that would be quite a bit of work, I imagine.
Elliott-Diy
Yeah, mapping it would definitely be a project. I looked into using open data from those sources, but ran into issues where the values didn’t match what MSN reports (which is what the Windows weather widget uses). Even small differences in temperature or how conditions are worded ("partly sunny" vs. "mostly sunny") can throw off the match. I’m planning to try using open data for historical screenshots eventually, but I expect it’ll reduce accuracy greatly.
rconti
Using a time series database would be great here.
Hi HN,
I built an OSINT tool called Weather2Geo that helps locate where a screenshot was taken based on the weather widget data visible (e.g. temp, condition, and local time in the taskbar). People often post these without realizing how specific those values can be in combination.
It works by comparing the given weather condition, temperature, and time against current data from thousands of cities. It’s timezone-aware, supports fuzzy matching, and groups results geographically to reduce noise.
It’s most effective on recent screenshots, ideally taken within the last hour—since weather and daylight conditions change quickly.
The tool helps pinpoint likely locations when screenshots lack EXIF data or other traditional OSINT clues.
It’s open source here: https://github.com/elliott-diy/Weather2Geo
Would love feedback, bug reports, or to hear if you think this has other use cases.
- Elliott