Privacy policy
ClimateSearch has no accounts, no sign-in and no user database. Your preferences stay on your device. The only personal detail we ever handle is an email address, and only if you choose to give us one. This page explains exactly what that means.
The short version
- You never create an account or give us your name. We only see an email address if you ask us to email your results — see Email.
- Your quiz answers and climate preferences are saved in your own browser’s storage. They are not saved on our servers.
- To rank cities we send your preferences to our server, score them, and return the results. The preferences are discarded once the response is sent.
- There is no advertising, no ad network, and no cross-site tracking.
- Map tiles are the one thing your browser fetches from someone else. Everything else on the page comes from us.
What is stored on your device
ClimateSearch uses your browser’s localStorage, not cookies. Four things are kept there, all under keys beginning climatematch::
- your climate profile — the temperature, humidity, sunshine, rain and snow ranges you chose;
- your raw quiz answers, so returning to the quiz does not start from scratch;
- the list of cities you added to a comparison;
- the list of cities you saved.
On the climate compatibility page, a second person’s profile is stored the same way and on the same device, so that a couple can compare answers without either profile leaving the browser.
None of this is synced, backed up or readable by us. Clearing your browser data removes it, and so does this button:
Removes your quiz answers, profile, saved cities and comparison list.
What is sent to our server
Scoring runs on the server, because the climate dataset is far too large to send to your browser. So when you view results, your profile is sent to /api/rank — or to /api/right-now for the live-forecast mode — and the ranked cities come back. The profile is held in memory for the duration of that request and then discarded. It is not written to a database, a file, or a log.
Your profile contains climate preferences only: numbers, ranges and how much each one matters to you. There is no free-text field anywhere in the app, and nothing in a profile identifies you.
Our API routes are rate-limited to stop one client overwhelming the service. That works by counting recent requests against the IP address our host reports, held in memory for sixty seconds and then dropped. The count is not associated with your preferences or with anything else you do.
Share links
When you share your results, the link contains your climate profile encoded into the web address. That is what lets someone open your exact results without us storing anything. It also means that anyone who has the link can see the preferences you entered, and that the address may appear in the browser history and server logs of whoever you send it to. Share links are not secret; treat them as public.
Analytics
ClimateSearch uses Vercel Web Analytics, provided by our hosting company, to count visits. It sets no cookies and does not follow you across other sites. For each page view it records the page address, the referring site, and coarse information such as browser, operating system and country.
Page addresses are cleaned before they are sent. A shared-results or invitation link carries your preferences in its address, so everything after the page name is removed except marketing campaign tags. Analytics learns only that a shared link was opened, never what it contained.
We also record a small set of anonymous product events — that a quiz was started or finished, that results were viewed or shared, that a city page was opened, that a comparison between two people was started. They carry only the interaction and coarse context such as a city name or a count: never your preferences, never a share link, and never an identifier for you. With your browser’s “Do Not Track” setting enabled, none of this is sent.
Other services
Open-Meteo. The “perfect weather right now” mode needs live forecasts, which we request from Open-Meteo. Those requests are made by our server, not by your browser, and contain only the latitude and longitude of candidate cities. Open-Meteo does not see your IP address and receives nothing about you.
The map. Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap, built from OpenStreetMap data. Unlike our other data, these are fetched by your browser rather than by our server, so OpenFreeMap receives your IP address and can see roughly which part of the world you are looking at. It requires no account and sets no cookies. We moved to it because a hosted basemap draws accurate coastlines, borders and place names that our own could not; the cost is this request, and we would rather say so than leave it unmentioned. If it is unreachable, the map falls back to an outline we host ourselves.
Fonts. The typeface is bundled with the site at build time and served from our own domain. Your browser makes no request to a font service.
Hosting. Like any website, our host records standard server logs — IP address, time, page requested, browser user agent — for security and reliability. We do not use those logs to build a profile of you.
Email is always your choice, and there are two separate choices. Neither is needed to use ClimateSearch.
Email me my results. If you type an address on the results page and ask for your results, our server uses it to send you that one email and then discards it. We do not add it to a list or keep a copy, and we do not write it to our logs. The email is delivered by Resend, the email service we use, which processes the address to deliver the message and keeps delivery records as its own privacy policy describes.
Future emails — optional and separate. An unticked box asks whether you would also like occasional ClimateSearch emails, such as new climate guides and features. Ticking it stores nothing on its own: your results email includes a confirmation link, and your address is added to our mailing list — held by Resend — only if you open that link and press the confirm button. Every email sent to the list has a one-click unsubscribe link.
To be removed from the list at any time, use the unsubscribe link in any email, or write to us at the address below and we will delete it.
What we never collect
No names, no passwords, no payment details, no contacts, no photos, no device identifiers, no advertising IDs — and no email address unless you choose to give one, as described above. ClimateSearch does not ask for your location: the cities it ranks come from your stated preferences, not from where you are.
Your rights
Your preferences live on your device and you control them directly, including with the button above. The only personal data we can hold about you is your email address, and only if you confirmed future emails. You can ask us what we hold, have it corrected, or have it deleted by writing to the address below; unsubscribing from any email also removes you from the list. If you believe we hold something else about you, write to us and we will look into it.
Children
ClimateSearch is a general-audience product and is not directed at children. Apart from an email address someone chooses to give us, we collect no personal information from anyone, and the email options are not intended for children.
Changes
If what the app does with data changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top is updated. The commitments here describe how the software actually behaves, not an aspiration.
Contact
ClimateSearch is made by US Stormwatch. For anything on this page, email stormwatchcolin@gmail.com.
See also our terms of use and methodology, which explains where the climate data comes from and what it can and cannot tell you.