I don't know what you thought of your local weather reporter when you were growing up, but for me, he played a bigger role walking in the city parade than as an accurate forecaster. I know it's not necessarily their fault—each meteorologist is at the mercy of a green screen and pre-determined satellite information. I guess we should all be happy that the digital push has literally put weather reporting in the hands of the people. Still, there are some days my pseudo-trusty weather app promises sunshine and cloudless skies and I'll get home drenched by an unexpected downpour, throwing me back to this 2-second Family Guy clip that I find myself going back to time and again:

It sends me into giggles every time. But thanks to BloomSky—a crowdsourced weather information system that's looking to restore our trust in forecasting—I may not have to resort to silly YouTube clips to relieve my unexpected weather rage. The package comes with a outdoor module and an app, with the option to buy add-ons like a solar panel, extended battery life, an indoor module and mounting supplies. The personal weather station has all kinds of cool capabilities built in: a rain sensor that can tell when rain starts and stops, down to the minute; weather pattern push notifications; a wide-angle HD camera that turns on a dawn and off at dusk for capturing weather scenes; an automatically created timelapse video come each sunset; and the ability to subscribe to other BloomSky stations for weather updates around the world.

The crowdsourcing weather station recently saw crowdfunded success (see what I did there?) on Kickstarter, surpassing its $75,000 initial goal and reaching its stretch goal of $100,000. Here's a video highlighting all of its bells and whistles:

The project—created by a team of 12, including Coroflot user Zheng Xiu—reminds me a bit of the conceptual weather simulator I wrote about a while back, seeing as the BloomSky app lets you check the weather from any spot where a weather detector has been installed.

Being the Wisconsin-bred girl I am, there's one detail that seems a bit flawed to me—the outdoor module can only take temperatures as low as -13° F. That may be well below what the Sunnyvale, California-based design team experiences, but growing up in a land where the windchill can surpass that on an extra blustery day, I'd be a little wary taking its word during the wintery months. That being said, it does function all the way up to 149° F, and I sincerely hope that's not a dealbreaker for anyone.

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If you're interested in pre-ordering a BloomSky, you can head on over to their website for more information. You can also check out more of Xu's work on Coroflot