Q. Can I send a forecast request from a mobile phone or regular email?
A. No. Your request has to be sent from a Garmin InReach device. Messages from InReach devices include a link to a Garmin web page with details about the device and its location. Your request won’t be processed without that link.
Q. Does this work with non-US locations?
A. US National Weather Service forecasts are only available for US locations, but you can get a forecast from VisualCrossing.com for any point on the globe.
Q. Are latitudes and longitudes only accepted in decimal degrees? Would UTM be possible?
A. It’s only decimal degrees. It’s implemented it that way because that’s how Garmin reports InReach locations, and that’s the format used by the NWS API and the VisualCrossing API.
Q. Is this costing you anything?
A. Not much except for my own time. The service is set up as a Google Apps Script, and for low volumes their hosting is free.
Q. Which models of InReach does this work with? What about the new InReach Mini?
A. It’s only been tested with the InReach SE, but I haven’t heard of any problems with other models.
Q. Could you include the NWS forecast discussion summary?
A. Unfortunately not. Forecasts are limited to information that's available from the NWS National Digital Forecast Database. This provides lots of numerical data, but no commentary.
Q. Does this provide marine forecasts?
A. Yes, for US coastal waters. If your request includes the keyword “nws6” you’ll get a detailed NWS 6-hourly forecast that includes wind speed, direction, and wave heights. Outside US coastal waters you can get a forecast from VisualCrossing.com that includes wind speed and direction, but not wave heights.
Q. I got the response “Error: No data for forecast point”. What does that mean?
A. It means that the server didn’t recognize the latitude and longitude in your forecast request. There could be several reasons for this.
A. No. Your request has to be sent from a Garmin InReach device. Messages from InReach devices include a link to a Garmin web page with details about the device and its location. Your request won’t be processed without that link.
Q. Does this work with non-US locations?
A. US National Weather Service forecasts are only available for US locations, but you can get a forecast from VisualCrossing.com for any point on the globe.
Q. Are latitudes and longitudes only accepted in decimal degrees? Would UTM be possible?
A. It’s only decimal degrees. It’s implemented it that way because that’s how Garmin reports InReach locations, and that’s the format used by the NWS API and the VisualCrossing API.
Q. Is this costing you anything?
A. Not much except for my own time. The service is set up as a Google Apps Script, and for low volumes their hosting is free.
Q. Which models of InReach does this work with? What about the new InReach Mini?
A. It’s only been tested with the InReach SE, but I haven’t heard of any problems with other models.
Q. Could you include the NWS forecast discussion summary?
A. Unfortunately not. Forecasts are limited to information that's available from the NWS National Digital Forecast Database. This provides lots of numerical data, but no commentary.
Q. Does this provide marine forecasts?
A. Yes, for US coastal waters. If your request includes the keyword “nws6” you’ll get a detailed NWS 6-hourly forecast that includes wind speed, direction, and wave heights. Outside US coastal waters you can get a forecast from VisualCrossing.com that includes wind speed and direction, but not wave heights.
Q. I got the response “Error: No data for forecast point”. What does that mean?
A. It means that the server didn’t recognize the latitude and longitude in your forecast request. There could be several reasons for this.
- Your InReach hadn’t acquired a GPS location at the time you sent your request.
- You tried to use loc {lat} {lon} to override the InReach’s current location, but there was a typo.
- You provided a valid location, but there was no response from the NWS or VisualCrossing.com. Unfortunately this sometimes happens. Sorry but there’s not much I can do about this. You’ll just have to try again later.