MinuteWeather precipitationIntensity why speed not amount?

Why does the documentation say this field returns the intensity of precipitation in UnitSpeed, this seems confusing. Shouldn't the amount of precipitation be an amount like inch/hr, mm/hr why would the value be in speed?

The old dark sky documentation for this field shows the units were returned in inches/hour

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The units of inches/hour (distance divided by time) is a speed. The only difference with WeatherKit is that it uses km/hr instead of in/hr — it's is the same information at a different scale factor. Since precipitationIntensity is a Measurement, you can easily convert it to other units if you want.

  • Yes! My brain wasn't working, realized after I posted this :) Thanks.

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I don't think Apple uses kph for precipitation intensity, at least not currently / anymore. I ran a 240h hourly API request and the precipitation amount ranges from 0 to 1.9. The precipitation intensity is identical to the precipitation amount. Since it's hourly granularity, the unit of speed is definitely not "per second" so not m/s. also K/h is implausible because 1.9 kph = 75000 inches per hour.

I would venture to guess that precipitation is "cm" and precipitation intensity is "cm/h"

Has anyone found explicit confirmation of the units? I don't see it anywhere in Apple's documentation.

cloudCover: % daylight: T/F humidity: % precipitationAmount: cm ? precipitationIntensity: cm/h ? precipitationChance:% pressure: hPa ? snowfallIntensity: cm/h snowfallAmount: cm temperature: C temperatureApparent: C temperatureDewPoint: C uvIndex: 0-10? visibility: m? windDirection: degrees ? windGust: m/s ? windSpeed: m/s ?