Privacy Policy

WeatherSignal is operated by BAIFI Analytics and Defense LLC, doing business as WeatherSignal. For any privacy question or request, email baifi@baifisystems.com.

All weather information on WeatherSignal: forecasts, alerts, radar, air quality, shelters, and the Everyday section: is free to read with no account and no login. You only create an account if you want the member features below.

A free member account is optional. It unlocks posting in Local Pulse, saving a hometown, the member inbox, and free entry into Community Relief.

• Sign-up: you can register with an email address and password, or sign in with Google. With Google, we receive your email address, name, and profile picture from Google: never your Google password. Authentication is handled by our backend provider; we do not store your password, only a secure hash held by that provider.
• Profile: first name, last name, display name, and an optional profile picture you upload. Profile pictures are stored in a private bucket and shown with your posts and comments.
• Hometown and preferences: your saved home location, units (temperature, wind, precipitation), Local Pulse radius, and whether your city is shown publicly. You control the public-city setting; when it is off, your city is not displayed with your posts.
• Activity: the time you were last active, so the site can show recent activity and moderate abuse.
• You may delete your account at any time by emailing us. Deleting the account removes your profile, posts, comments, reactions, saved locations, notifications, and relief entries.

• What you post: text, photos or video you attach, the weather tag, and a general area label: is public to anyone who visits the site. Do not post anything you would not want publicly visible.
• Posts include an approximate location so neighbours can see nearby conditions. The area label shown to others is general (neighbourhood or city level), not your street address.
• A snapshot of the weather conditions at the time of your post is stored with it.
• Media you attach is stored in our media bucket and served with the post.
• Reactions, comments, blocks, and reports you make are stored so the feature works and so moderation is possible. Reports are visible to moderators, not to the person reported.
• You can delete your own posts and comments at any time. Moderators may remove content that violates the rules.

Messages we send you in the app: “you're entered”, selection notices, account notices: are stored on your account so they appear in your inbox and bell. They are visible only to you. You can mark them read, archive, or delete them.

Entering the monthly Community Relief drawing is free and collects nothing beyond your account. We only ask for more if you are selected.

• Entry: a record that your account entered for the current month. No address, phone number, income, household details, or documents are requested to enter.
• If you are selected: to prevent fraud and pay a provider directly, we ask for a copy of the outstanding bill (utility, water, gas, internet or rent). That document may contain your name, service address, account number, amount due and provider.
• Bill documents are stored in a private bucket that is never publicly accessible, never shown in Local Pulse or on profiles, and readable only by you and authorised staff. Every staff access is logged.
• An automated check reads the document to pull out provider, amount, dates and account holder, and to flag possible duplicates. It only routes the case to a human; it never approves, rejects, or accuses anyone.
• Documents are given a retention date and are purged after that period. Payment records (provider, amount, date, reference) are kept for accounting and audit purposes.
• We pay the provider directly. We do not send cash, and we do not sell, rent, or share relief information with advertisers or anyone else outside the program, except where required by law.

If you report a shelter listing as closed, wrong, or unsafe, we store the report, the reason, your note, and: if you are signed in: your account reference, so we can verify the listing and prevent abuse of the report system. Reports are reviewed by staff and are not shown publicly with your name.

• Manual search: when you type a city, ZIP code, or place name, that text is sent to our server to look up coordinates and fetch a forecast. It is used for that request and is not tied to an identity.
• Precise location (optional): if you tap “Use my location” and your browser grants permission, your device coordinates are sent to our server only to fetch a forecast and nearby alerts for that point. We do not store a history of your coordinates, and we never send precise coordinates to advertising partners.
• Approximate location fallback: if your browser blocks location, we can look up an approximate city-level location from your IP address using a third-party lookup service (ipwho.is). You choose this by pressing the button; it is not done silently in the background.
• Saved locations: if you are signed out, locations you save stay in your own browser's local storage. If you are signed in, they are saved to your account so they follow you between devices, and you can remove them at any time.
• Hometown: if you set one, it is stored on your account and used to personalise your dashboard and your Local Pulse radius.

You can always use WeatherSignal without sharing precise location by searching manually. Revoking location permission in your browser immediately stops any precise-location use.

• Like every website, our hosting and security infrastructure processes standard request data: IP address, user agent (device and browser type), requested URL, referrer, and timestamps. This is used for delivering pages, caching, abuse prevention, and diagnosing errors.
• WeatherSignal uses a site-protection service operated by BAIFI Analytics and Defense LLC on the weatherpulse.live domain. It processes device and browser characteristics and interaction signals to detect abuse and automated attacks. It does not record the content of what you type.
• Weather responses are cached server-side and shared across all visitors, so most page views do not create any per-visitor record beyond standard request logs.
• Basic traffic counting: we record the page path and a random browser-generated session identifier so we can see how busy the site is. If you are signed in, the visit is linked to your account reference. It is not sold, not shared with advertisers, and not used to build an advertising profile.

WeatherSignal groups storage and cookies into four categories:

• Necessary: your theme choice, saved locations, accessibility preferences, your cookie choice itself, and, if you sign in, the secure session token that keeps you logged in. These are stored in your browser and are always active because the site cannot work correctly without them.
• Analytics: aggregate usage measurement. Off unless you allow it.
• Advertising: cookies, web beacons, pixels, and similar identifiers set or read by advertising partners. Off unless you allow it.
• Personalized advertising: use of identifiers to tailor ads to you. Off unless you allow it, and it requires advertising consent as well.

Open cookie preferences

• Third-party vendors, including Google, may use cookies, web beacons, device identifiers, or IP addresses to serve ads on WeatherSignal based on your visits to this and other sites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to WeatherSignal and other sites on the internet.
• You can opt out of personalized advertising by Google at Google Ads Settings, and out of third-party vendor cookies at aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.eu.
• Where advertising consent is required, ad scripts are not loaded at all until you allow the advertising category above. If you allow advertising but not personalization, WeatherSignal requests non-personalized ads.
• WeatherSignal does not pass your precise GPS coordinates, saved locations, or the content of contact messages to advertising partners.

External opt-out links: Google Ads Settings, aboutads.info, Your Online Choices.

Donations are handled entirely by PayPal. If you donate, PayPal: not WeatherSignal: collects and processes your payment details under PayPal's privacy policy. We never see or store your card or bank information. We only see what PayPal shows a recipient: that a donation was received, and the name or email the sender chose to share.

Our contact form does not submit anything to our servers: it opens your own email app with the details pre-filled. If you send that email, we receive it in an ordinary business mailbox and keep it as long as needed to handle your request and for reasonable record-keeping, then delete it.

• Weather, alert, air quality, and radar data providers: listed in full on our data sources page. Requests to these providers include the coordinates being looked up, sent by our server, not your browser.
• Our backend platform: hosts the database, authentication, file storage, and real-time notifications behind member accounts.
• Google Sign-In: only if you choose it to create or access an account.
• An AI processing service: used only to read the text of a Community Relief bill document you upload, so staff can review it. It is not used to profile you or to make decisions on its own.
• ipwho.is: optional approximate location lookup when you ask for it and browser location is unavailable.
• Google Fonts: serves the site's typefaces.
• PayPal: donations.
• Google AdSense and advertising partners: only when advertising consent is granted.
• Our hosting and CDN provider: page delivery and caching.

The provider list is maintained on the data sources page.

• Cached weather data: minutes to hours, then replaced. Not linked to you.
• Server and security logs: kept for a short operational period for abuse prevention and debugging.
• Browser storage (theme, consent, and locations saved while signed out): stays on your device until you clear it.
• Account data (profile, preferences, saved locations): kept while your account exists, then deleted when you close it.
• Local Pulse posts, comments and reactions: kept until you delete them, you close your account, or moderators remove them.
• Notifications: kept until you delete them or your account is closed.
• Community Relief bill documents: kept only for the review period, then purged on their retention date. Payment records are kept longer for accounting and audit.
• Visit counts used for site traffic: short-lived aggregate records, not tied to advertising.
• Emails you send us: kept until the matter is resolved plus reasonable record-keeping.

• Change or withdraw cookie consent at any time via “Cookie preferences” in the footer.
• Revoke location permission in your browser settings at any time; manual search always remains available.
• Clear your browser's site data to remove saved locations, theme, and consent.
• Edit or clear your profile, hometown, units, and the “show my city publicly” setting from Account settings at any time.
• Delete your own posts and comments, block other members, and report content from within Local Pulse.
• Ask us to delete your account and everything tied to it by emailing us. We do not require a reason.
• Entering Community Relief is voluntary; you can skip a month or ask us to withdraw your entry before selection.
• Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, port, or restrict the personal data we hold, or to object to processing. Email us and we will respond.
• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share account, post, relief, or location data with advertisers.

WeatherSignal is a general-audience informational site and is not directed to children under 13. Member accounts, Local Pulse posting, and Community Relief are intended for people 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13; if you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

WeatherSignal is operated from the United States and serves locations worldwide. Data processed to deliver the site may be handled in the United States and by the providers listed above.

If the site's actual data practices change: a new provider, analytics, or advertising: this page is updated and the “last updated” date above changes with it.