A local couple who designed and co-founded the Strava fitness tool has released a new interactive app that utilizes real-time weather data along with user reports to track the Bay Area’s fog.
Outer Sunset couple Michael and Macbeth Horvath said they began building Foggy through their software company Nyfik to help plan their own outdoor activities, and they released it to the public last week, as NBC Bay Area reports. Michael and Macbeth reportedly met while working together at the fitness app Strava, where Michael was a co-founder and Macbeth served as the company's Vice President of Design & Research.
According to SFGate, Foggy combines publicly available weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES satellite with temperature and humidity measurements from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center, while also allowing users to anonymously report real-time fog conditions. The crowdsourced reports help fill gaps in satellite data, which can reportedly struggle to distinguish between low clouds and ground-level fog across the Bay Area's varied terrain.
“It’s very specific to the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular,” Macbeth Horvath told NBC Bay Area. “We were inspired because we ride and run and like to spend time outside. It helped to know what to expect, how many layers to bring, and when it was going to be wet.”
Logan Williams, creator of the longtime local fog tracker Fog Today and an adviser to the Foggy team, told SFGate that Foggy builds on Bay Area residents' longstanding fascination with the region's fog, noting that people have “really individual relationships with the fog” and track it for everything from cycling and paragliding to birdwatching and photography.
“The way people talk about fog is so lyrical, if you will,” said Michael Horvath, speaking to SFGate. “Bringing that out in the experience not only helps us to be more accurate, but it also makes it a lot more joyful for the people who are using it.”
Image: Apple Store
