Privacy Policy

Who we are

WeatherTotals is a reference almanac of measured weather events and aurora visibility in the United States. We show observations that have already happened, along with the source and the time of observation. This policy applies to weathertotals.com and to any email updates you sign up for.

WeatherTotals is the data controller for personal information described in this policy. If you have questions about this policy or how your data is handled, use our contact page.

What we collect

We collect personal data in only two situations: when you sign up for email updates and when you submit the contact form. For email update signups, we store the email address you provide, the page you signed up from, and the time of signup. For contact form submissions, we store your name if you choose to give one, the email address you enter, and the text of your message. No other personal data comes to us directly.

Your location will not be requested by the browser on the snow, rain or aurora near me pages until you press the Use my location button. The coordinates never leave your browser; we match them against a built-in list of places and send nothing to our server. On the temperature yesterday page we use your IP address to derive a rough area, country, latitude and longitude, which is passed to us with the page request; that single request carries the location only so the page can choose the nearest weather station for its opening sentence, and we do not store it or log it beyond the standard server logs already described.

How we use it

• To send the email updates you asked for.
• To manage your subscription, including processing unsubscribe requests.
• To respond to your enquiries.

Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link. You can also ask to be removed at any time through the contact page.

• For email updates, our legal basis is consent; you give it by clicking the confirmation link in the signup email, and you can withdraw it by unsubscribing. Replying to contact-form messages draws on our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us. The same basis covers server logs for security and keeping the site running, analytics reports on which pages people read and how many visits they draw, and the approximate location on the temperature yesterday page for showing a relevant opening figure. In the UK, EEA and Switzerland, analytics runs without any cookie or identifier.

The contact page is where you can send an objection to any legitimate-interest processing.

Who processes it for us

The following third parties process data on our behalf:

(Neon) Databricks Inc. (United States) runs the database that holds your email address and signup details from email update subscriptions, including the US state and the categories you chose at signup.

Vercel Inc. (United States) Serves this site to your browser. Standard server logs record your IP address and browser type, along with the pages you request and when each request happens. Those logs are processed by Vercel.

Google Analytics 4, which Google runs on our behalf, receives page views and the device and browser details that the analytics section below lists. Google's handling of that information falls under its data processing terms, where it acts as a processor.

When you submit a contact form, our inbox receives exactly one notification email for each contact form submission. That notification email, which is sent once per form submission, carries the name you entered (if you provided one), the email address you typed into the form, and the body of the message you wrote. For that email, the processor is Resend Inc.

When you use the contact form, Resend sends both the notification to our inbox and an automatic acknowledgement to the address you typed, and Resend acts as processor for both messages.

Other websites embed an iframe from weathertotals.com as the widget; our servers deliver the widget page and its fonts with each load; Vercel's standard server logs record your IP address, browser type and time, and the address of the page embedding the widget when your browser sends it. No part of the widget sets a cookie, writes to browser storage, or loads analytics.

Cookies and browser storage

We store four values in your browser's local storage: your light or dark appearance choice, the text size you choose with the phone header control, a count of visits, and the date you dismissed the add-to-home-screen bar if you did. Session storage holds two values, both gone when the tab closes: the last module tab you opened on the home page, and a flag that prevents the visit count from rising more than once per session.

None of these values ever leaves your device; their only purpose is to keep the same settings for your next visit and to stop the home-screen bar from asking a second time. The service worker is a small script the browser keeps so you can add the site to your home screen; it stores one page, an offline notice, and no weather data. Browser settings allow you to remove all of the above.

Google Analytics cookies are the only kind we set; the analytics section describes them, and we self-host our fonts with no outside font servers.

Weather and aurora data on this site comes from NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM). Our servers fetch that data before the page reaches your browser.

In addition to weathertotals.com, the Google Analytics script loads from one other domain, googletagmanager.com, which your browser contacts; the script then sends analytics events to Google's collection endpoint. This site uses no ad servers and no social media widgets.

Advertising and analytics

Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-ZXL354ESQV) supplies visit counts and tells us which pages are read. For each page view, the page URL and title, the referrer, and an approximate location derived from your IP address (country, region, city) are captured by Google. The device details recorded include browser, operating system, screen size, language, and device type. The time of the visit is logged as well.

Google Analytics 4 does not log or store your IP address itself. A first-party cookie named _ga and a second cookie named _ga_ followed by the property ID are placed by GA4 for visitors outside Switzerland, the European Economic Area, and the United Kingdom. These cookies hold a random visitor identifier so that repeat visits from the same browser count as one visitor; they last up to two years.

Under Google Consent Mode, storage for analytics defaults to off for anyone in the UK, the EEA, or Switzerland; as a result, no analytics cookie is set, and neither is any identifier stored on the device. Instead, the site sends a cookieless ping without an identifier, which is why no cookie banner appears.

Google Signals is off, and ads personalization is off, so there is no cross-device or advertising use of this data. Event-level data retention at Google is set to two months, the minimum allowed. To opt out, one option is the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout; another is blocking googletagmanager.com through a browser extension or content blocker. Blocking analytics does not stop the site from functioning.

As of the effective date of this policy, we do not use advertising cookies and we do not participate in cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not sell your personal information.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR where they apply, you have the right to access, correct, delete or restrict processing of your personal data, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to data portability, under which you can get a machine-readable copy of the data you provided to us.

You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting anything we did before withdrawal. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, the supervisory authority for the operator, or if you are in the EU to the data protection authority in your country.

If you are in a US state with a privacy law, such as California under the CCPA and CPRA, you have the right to know what personal data we collect, to request deletion, and to ask for correction.

Because we do not sell or share personal data for cross-context behavioural advertising, you do not need to opt out of anything. Exercising any of these rights will not lead to discriminatory treatment.

• To exercise any of these rights, go to the contact page.
• We will respond within 30 days.
• You can unsubscribe from email updates at any time using the link in any email.

International transfers

In the United States, Vercel, Neon, Google and Resend process personal data. Each of those four US providers holds an EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification that includes the UK Extension and the Swiss-US framework, and those certifications authorize transfers of personal data from the UK and the EEA. If the framework is invalidated, each provider's data processing agreement falls back to the EU standard contractual clauses plus the UK addendum.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If a parent or guardian believes we have received information about a child, please contact us through the contact page so we can delete it.

Retention

Your email address and signup details remain stored only while your subscription is active, plus a short interval after you opt out or ask for deletion. Security and operations require keeping server logs for a short period.

We keep messages from the contact form, and the notification email each one triggers, until we have had time to review and reply. After that, we retain them for a reasonable period. Google Analytics event data is retained by Google for two months. Past that two-month window, aggregated reports are still available. Two years is the upper limit for GA4 cookies, and clearing them yourself ends them sooner.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will post the revised version on this page with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy, about your personal data, or about exercising a right described in it can be sent to contact [at] weathertotals.com or via the contact page.