Animal Crossing tool helps predict your weather, shooting stars

Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans have a potent new tool that can help them track the weather, thanks to a popular figure in the community.

MeteoNook, which is currently in alpha, can be used to predict rainfall and meteor showers alike. Ninji, the app’s creator, is well known in the New Horizons community for data mining and sharing information. The extraordinary data miner has uncovered secrets like the return of Redd and his art sales, when villagers move out, and when special characters come to visit the island.

The tool helps help players calculate when they can see meteor showers, rainbows, the aurora borealis, and day-to-day weather changes.

In order to properly use MeteoNook, the player has to input a significant amount of data. Ninji has written instructions on how to do so here. It involves tracking weather changes on your island, and carefully inputting that information into the site, so that it can figure out your “seed.” Once it has enough information, the MeteoNook can tell you what comes next. Ninji explains this in further detail on the MeteoNook site, writing:

There are over 2 billion possible weather seeds, but only one is correct for your island. MeteoNook goes through every single possibility, calculates the weather it would give, and checks it against the data you provide. If it doesn’t make sense (e.g. you said you had rain at a given time, but the seed would make it sunny) then that possibility is ignored.

During testing, we’ve had success with the following combinations...

The known dates for between 5 and 7 heavy showers

The known hour and minute times for stars in a light shower, spanning between 1 and 3 hours

The known hour, minute and second times for a few different stars in a light shower

The known dates and times for between 5 and 7 rainbows

Tracking weather is extremely useful for New Horizons fans who want to plan in advance. Rain can affect the kind of fish the player can catch, and meteor showers grant players valuable star fragments that can be used in crafting.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to track Celeste with the tool, as she randomly appears on your island one day of the week. However, this tool is a fascinating look at the interior logic of New Horizons, and makes the task of hunting down a double rainbow much less daunting.

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