Ancient Web: wttr.in Made a Weather Report Fit Inside a Terminal

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A weather website usually wants to be an app. wttr.in is quite happy to be a picture made of punctuation.

Visit wttr.in.

The service returns forecasts formatted for a text terminal: little suns, clouds, rows of daily conditions, temperature, wind and precipitation. Its open-source documentation describes how the same address can also provide HTML, plain text, PNG graphics or structured data. The display changes according to the requesting program. A browser and a terminal can visit the same service without needing the same interface.

This is not a surviving website from 1996. It is a later project that deliberately preserves a command-line way of using the Internet. A PowerShell example published by creator Igor Chubin in February 2016 shows the idea was already circulating a decade ago.

A forecast that fits inside a URL

The project's README starts with a one-line request, curl wttr.in. To check a different city, append its name: wttr.in/London. Airport codes, custom output strings, moon phases and alternate languages are documented in the same sprawling reference.

The format is surprisingly useful for both a human and a script. One display prints an ASCII weather icon, while a shorter request returns a single line suitable for a shell prompt or a desktop status bar. The project documents terminal-specific character limitations and works with curl, wget, PowerShell and browser clients.

Chubin says the service began as a wrapper around the console forecast program wego. The repository now includes server code, documentation, supported output formats and integration instructions. It offers a much more involved service than its tiny interface initially suggests.

The scale claimed by its maintainers is notable: the README reports roughly 100 million daily queries in April 2026, drawn from its own access logs. That is an operator-supplied estimate rather than independently verified traffic.

Where many websites insist on adding a visual dashboard, wttr.in retains a distinctly older Internet virtue. One URL gives you useful information, without an account, a timeline or an application marketplace.

Its page changes with the actual weather, so a visit today is not a historical snapshot. The enduring artifact is the interface contract: simple text, familiar commands and a public service that accepts requests from decidedly unfashionable software.

Explore the source, usage examples and documented formats.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.