Up-to-date Weather Reports on DeLorme inReach

[Manfred]

I have seen several discussions on BPL about Spot vs. inReach vs. PLB. When comparing the Spot vs. the inReach, all these discussions focus on the 2 way abilities of the inReach that allow it to email/text back and forth with anyone on a computer, a cell phone or another inReach. The latter is rarely mentioned but really important for groups that separate in the wilderness and need to stay in contact.

One topic, I have never seen in those discussions, is the inReach’s ability to request and receive up-to-date local weather reports.

I assume most of us, who are in the US, have used the National Weather Service to get local weather reports like the following. You provide a coordinate – in this case for a random location in Alaska and you receive a detailed 7 day forecast.

With the inReach you can send a message to receive that weather information. There are two services I’m aware of – one is free and the other one charges a monthly fee of $6 (24 hour forecast), $7 (48 hour forecast), $8 (72 hour forecast).

Here is what it looks like if I send a request to the free service that provides me with the National Weather Forecast for the location I provide (or my current location if I don’t provide coordinates).

So I receive the basic information that you saw above in the 9 little graphics – for each 12 hour period (day/night) you get a description like (RnShw – Rain Showers), the chance of it to happen in %, and the temperature (high for the day, low for the night).

If I would like to get the additional information like wind speed and cloud cover that is described above in the “Detailed Forecast” I can use a paid service that sends me the following information.

This is a little harder to read, but provides more information and is more granular (6 hour periods).
Each weather report delivered contains four forecasts over a 24-hour period for your location. Each forecast provides a time stamp (converted to your local time zone) and forecasts of the following six weather factors:

• air temperature (F or C)
• total inches (or mm) of precipitation during each 6 hour period
• % cloud cover
• surface pressure in mb
• wind speed in knots
• wind direction (true)

For most of my trips the free service is totally sufficient – and I like that I can “look ahead” by providing my planned location for tomorrow or the day after to see what the weather will most likely be there at the time of my arrival.

For trips in remote areas that take several weeks, I like the added confidence of the commercial service, since the free service is provided by an individual as an experimental service that I use at my own risk and it could at any time be closed.

Here are links to more information about those weather services

Free Service by Martin le Roux

SpotCast Weather by OCENS

To me these services are extremely valuable during my trips and are an important factor in the decision Spot vs. inReach.

Have fun out there and stay safe!

Manfred

[BlackHatGuy]

"One topic, I have never seen in those discussions, is the inReach’s ability to request and receive up-to-date local weather reports. "

Probably because many of us didn't know about this value add at all! I certainly didn't.

Thanks Manfred, this is fabulous!

[Jeff McWilliams]

What an awesome feature! I had no idea either. Totally clinches my decision to purchase an InReach this summer.

[Bob Gross]

Remember that this stuff isn't free.

Messages will count in your service plan.

–B.G.–

[Manfred]

Bob,

The service by Martin le Roux is free. The cost of sending/receiving messages from/on the inReach depends of course on your selected plan.

I defined "wx now" to "+17204632647" as one of my pre-set messages, which makes sending my request for the weather report free.

Receiving the weather report counts against my message quota. Usually I use the "Recreation" plan that comes with 40 messages/month. That is plenty for my weekend trips and even a week long outing in between. For longer trips of several weeks, where I expect to use more messages, I take the "Expedition" plan that comes with unlimited messages.

[Bob Gross]

"I defined "wx now" to "+17204632647" as one of my pre-set messages, which makes sending my request for the weather report free."

But again, that depends on the service plan that you have and how many other messages you send.

–B.G.–

[Manfred]

Bob,

You can send an unlimited number of any of the three pre-set messages with any plan (Safety, Recreation, Expedition, Extreme). It doesn't depend on your service plan. So by defining "wx now" to "+17204632647" as one of my pre-set messages these messages never count against my message quota.

Sending a free-form message like “wx now loc 36.58 -118.29” counts against the message quota. Depending on my plan and how many messages I have left, it will in most cases not cause any additional cost. If I exceeded my quota, an additional message will cost me 50 cents. You are absolutely right to point out that these costs can occur – even when using a free service. I should have explained that better in my original post.

Manfred

[Bob Gross]

Manfred, you are completely missing my point. You are looking at this as it applies to you, and not how it applies to users in general.

Yes, you are thinking about outgoing messages as they apply to your service plan, although not necessarily as they apply to my service plan. You are not thinking about the incoming weather messages on a daily basis.

Also, the details of the Safety service plan depend on when you entered it, so it most assuredly does depend on the plan. Every one of my preset messages sent counts toward my monthly allowance.

–B.G.–

[Manfred]

Bob,

in summary I believe that being able to receive local, up-to-date weather reports is a very useful feature of the Delorme inReach that sets it apart from the Spot and should be considered in any decision.

To help readers who are not familiar with the DeLorme inReach subscription plans you and I are discussing right now, I add the following table from the DeLorme website. That will hopefully be helpful to readers to see how much it would cost them under their personal circumstances. I'm personally using different "Freedom" plans (Recreation, Expedition), where I activate my inReach only for a month at a time instead of paying the annual subscription fee all year long.

Manfred

[Bob Gross]

Yes, this is the current table of service plans. What it does not show would be the terms that affect others who were grandfathered in prior to the start of the Freedom Plan (late March, I believe).

Yes, the two-way capabilities make it a completely different animal as compared to the one-way devices.

–B.G.–

[Ash Nat]

I've been researching the Spot Gen3 and the inReach. This sways me heavily in favour of the inReach.

Thanks for the PSA Manfred.

[Rex Sanders]

Manfred,

Thanks for the info, very useful.

And thanks to Martin le Roux for the free service. It costs him a little bit for every message in/out.

— Rex

[Martin Le Roux]

If you’ve used my free Wx2InReach service in the past week or two you might have got an error message that said “no data for forecast point”. That’s because there was a change on DeLorme’s side that affected this. I’ve made a change on my side and the service is now working again.

Here are the complete instructions again: http://wx2inreach.weebly.com/details.html
If you have any questions or comments feel free to email Wx2InReach [at] gmail.com.

[Rex Sanders]

Of course, I was trying to use the free Wx2InReach service over the last few days while backpacking in the Santa Cruz (Calif) mountains, and the first significant rain in about 5 months came through. Weather reports before the trip were in the range of no rain to 20% chance. At 3 AM Thursday morning, I learned first hand the importance of seam sealing :-)

Martin, thanks again for developing and paying for this free service. I understand third-party service hiccups all too well.

— Rex

[Martin Le Roux]

Bad news. Unfortunately the Wx2InReach service has reached a cap of the number of users. It turns out that DeLorme doesn’t allow more than about 90 InReach devices to send outgoing SMSs to any one number (it's all to do with the way they map reply-to numbers to InReach devices). Previous users will continue to be able to use this service, but for now if you’re a new user then messages to +17204632647 won’t get through. Sorry about that. I’ve been in contact with DeLorme and hopefully there'll be a solution. Keep an eye on wx2inreach.weebly.com for updates.

[Jim Milstein]

"It turns out that DeLorme doesn’t allow more than about 90 InReach devices to send outgoing SMSs to any one number (it's all to do with the way they map reply-to numbers to InReach devices)."

First, this is pretty pathetic from a software engineering point of view. Second, it's worse than Martin indicates: I had been working with Martin to determine why his Wx service is not working when I try to use it. From my point of view, every message I sent to +17204632647 was delivered. At Martin's end, he could see no messages from my inReach at all.

DeLorme doesn't tell its users or potential users that some numbers may be inaccessible because of a quota, nor does DeLorme tell an inReach user when a particular message is not delivered because of a quota.

Now, back to software engineering: Quotas? Quotas! You've got to be kidding.

[Rex Sanders]

Bummer. I had some interesting ideas for other services. But that limit is completely unworkable. I hope they fix it soon.

— Rex

[Martin Le Roux]

Wx2InReach is once more available to new users. I've re-engineered it to use DeLorme's email interface instead of SMS, and the number of users is no longer capped. The only change is that forecast requests now have to be sent from your InReach to [email protected], not the old SMS number. This is still in beta test so please bear with me if you find any bugs. As before, keep an eye on http://wx2inreach.weebly.com for updates.

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