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Privacy

Searching the weather does not create an account. We only store something about you if you turn on rain alerts.

Cookies

raindar_oid is a first-party cookie. It holds a signed anonymous identifier so rain alerts still work after you reload the page. It is HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, and Secure on HTTPS. It lasts up to 400 days. We set it only when you enable rain alerts or allow notifications — not when you merely open a place page.

If you log into the operations dashboard, a separate raindar_admin session cookie keeps that login. Ordinary visitors never receive it.

Rain alerts

If you enable alerts we store that anonymous identifier, the place you chose (coordinates and an optional label), your alert settings, and the Web Push subscription your browser gives us (an endpoint and encryption keys). We also keep a short record of rain events and whether a notification was sent, so we do not nag you twice about the same rain.

We do not ask for an email address or a password on the public site. Notifications are delivered by your browser’s push service (for example Google, Mozilla or Apple), using VAPID keys we hold.

Analytics

The public pages load Plausible, a cookieless analytics script. It counts visits without advertising cookies or a personal profile.

How long we keep it

The alerts cookie can last 400 days. We also note when that identifier was last seen. Disable rain alerts in the place-page panel, then clear site data for raindar.co.uk if you want the cookie gone from this browser.

What we do not do

We do not sell this information. We do not use it for advertising. Place searches and forecast pages do not require the alerts cookie.

Contact

raindar is made by Tiago Espinha. The public site is raindar.co.uk. Questions about this page or the alerts cookie can go to info@raindar.co.uk.

More about the person who runs it is at tiagoespinha.net.