While the Amazon Echo has a ton of awesome skills, some of its simplest and most useful come packaged in. You probably ask Alexa about the weather almost every day, but do you ever wish it was a little better?

By default, Alexa's weather reading only gives information about your general area by ZIP code. If you'd like to hear weather for your exact location on an hour-by-hour basis, there's an Echo skill that will help.

How to Get Better Weather Forecasts on Amazon Echo

For a better weather experience, you need to use the BigSky skill. It's powered by Dark Sky, a popular weather service on mobile. This will help you get forecasts for your address instead of an entire city.

To install it, either click Enable Skill on its desktop page, or say Alexa, enable Big Sky. Once you do so, you'll need to link your account before it works properly.

Open the Alexa app and look for the Big Sky---Account Setup card. Tap Link Account and enter your complete address. Below this, you can choose a few options like level of detail and temperature/wind speed units. Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap Submit to complete this.

Now, you can ask Alexa to get a forecast from the skill. Try the following commands:

"Alexa, ask Big Sky..."

  • "...what's the temperature?"
  • "...will it rain today?"
  • "...what was the weather on January 1st, 1970?"
  • "...what's the low temperature in the next seven days?"
  • "...give me a weather fact."

Big Sky does a lot by default, but the developer also offers a Premium version for $3 a year. This allows you to add multiple addresses and label them, so you can ask "What's the weather at dad's house?" Premium also lets you get forecasts for anywhere, so the skill will answer "How hot will it get in Miami today?"

If this new skill inspired you, check out how to use Alexa to be more productive.