With the iPhone 4S Apple introduced Siri, the Digital Assistant that has some great features for checking the weather. However, Siri uses the yahoo weather service which is notoriously inaccurate for Australian weather compared to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). Australian BOM Siri Weather is a tweak to get accurate Bureau of Meteorology weather information in response to Siri queries. Australian BOM Siri Weather is a companion to Australian BOM Weather+ for iPhone which provides BOM weather information in the default iPhone weather app as well as in the Notification Center Weather Widget. It requires the iPhone to be jail broken.
Clicking on the BoM button in the Siri response shows detailed Weather observations, forecasts and animated weather radars in Safari. You can also configure which app runs when you click on the forecast description if you want to run something other than the default iPhone weather application.
Australian BOM Siri Weather is an extension based on the AssistantExtensions framework.
To install on your iPhone launch cydia and search for "Australian BOM Siri Weather", select and then install.
Any information that isn't held by the BOM will show yahoo data. For example, if the BOM only provides a 3 day forecast for your location the forecast for days 4, 5 and 6 will come from yahoo. Also, BOM locations don't match yahoo locations exactly. To see what BOM location your location is mapped to click here.
Any feedback for Australian BOM Siri Weather would be greatly appreciated. For feedback or issues please contact me at proxydata@rdharris.org.
All weather information provided by Australian BOM Siri Weather is copyright the Bureau of Meteorology.