Plaincast – Plain English Translations of NWS Area Forecast Discussions

I built Plaincast to make NWS Area Forecast Discussions (AFDs) readable by normal humans. AFDs are the most detailed weather forecasts available in the US - written by local meteorologists multiple times a day - but they're packed with jargon, abbreviations, and shorthand that makes them nearly impenetrable.

Plaincast pulls AFDs from the NWS API, breaks them into sections, and translates them side-by-side into plain English. There's a regex-based translation that runs instantly, plus an optional AI-enhanced mode (Claude Haiku) for more natural output.

Covers 19 NWS offices so far. No login, no tracking, free.

Stack: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, NWS API, Vercel serverless for AI translation. Single-file frontend (~1,800 lines). The whole thing is intentionally simple.