If you’re like us, the first thing you do every day is check the weather app on your iPhone. If it returns a blank screen this morning, it’s not a Wi-Fi problem — Apple systems have had serious problems this week.
After more than half a day of intermittent outages, service was restored on Tuesday, though the problem returned on Wednesday morning. Apple’s status page says the app was fixed as of Tuesday afternoon and then again on Wednesday morning, and it looks like the Weather app itself needs a bigger overhaul to prevent the outage from happening again.
According to Apple’s System Status page on Tuesday, the Weather app has had “ongoing” issues with “slow or unreliable” service since 11:00 PM ET on Monday. The problem reappeared overnight and was fixed at 3:45 AM ET this morning, according to Apple’s status update.
Apple notes that “some users are affected,” but based on anecdotal certificate– including Macworld’s own experience – the issue seemed to be widespread. It also seemed to affect the weather widget, which showed “no weather data” even when the weather appeared correctly in the app. We experienced slow updates on Wednesday morning even after Apple claimed the issue had been fixed.
Apple responded to the inquiries on Twitter with a message saying that it is “currently working on a resolution to the Weather app outage and will post an update online.” Later in the afternoon, Apple’s status page was completely green and the warning indicator was up.
Some Macworld employees have had intermittent issues with the Weather app for the past several weeks. Sometimes, the app is slow to load or doesn’t load at all. Quitting the app and restarting was a quick fix, but even that doesn’t always work. So while Apple gave us the green light (literally, it’s no longer yellow on Apple’s status page), it’s not clear if a larger overhaul of the app isn’t needed. Some reports have suggested that an iOS 16.4.1 update may be imminent to fix the underlying issue. Apple doesn’t update its apps independently of the system, so any fix should arrive as part of a larger iOS update.
Of course, this is not the end of the world as 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 iOS Weather app — which picked up many of Dark Sky’s features in iOS 16 — will likely be the go-to source for weather information for many users.
