If you’re anything like us, one of the first things you do every morning is check the weather app on your iPhone. If it returned a blank screen this morning, it’s not a problem with your Wi-Fi – Apple’s systems have been having serious problems all day. As of 3:30 p.m. ET, service appears to have been restored
According to Apple’s System Status page earlier today, the Weather app had “ongoing” issues as of 11:00 p.m. ET Monday and the service “may be slow or unreliable.” Apple notes that “some users are affected”, but based on anecdotal evidence– including igamesnews’s own experience – the problem seems to be quite widespread. This also seems to affect the Weather widget, which reports “No weather data” even when the weather is showing correctly in the app. The status page also explicitly states that the next hour’s precipitation may not be available for Alaska due to a data provider outage.
Apple responded to questions on Twitter with a message saying they are “currently working on a fix for the Weather app outage and will post an update online.” Later that afternoon, Apple’s status page was all green and the warning flag had been lifted.
Some igamesnews staff have been experiencing on/off issues with the Weather app over the past few weeks. Sometimes the app is slow to load or does not load at all. Quitting the app and re-launching it was a quick workaround, but even that doesn’t always work. So we’re on hold until Apple gives us the green light (literally, it’s yellow on Apple’s status page at the moment). Some reports suggest that an iOS 16.4.1 update may be imminent to fix the underlying issue, but Apple appears to have fixed it.
Of course, it’s not the end of the world because there are many ways to get weather conditions and forecasts on your phone. However, after Apple shut down the popular Dark Sky app on January 1, the stock iOS Weather app, which took over many features from Dark Sky, is probably the go-to source of weather information for many other users.