PRIVACY POLICY

Effective date: August 14, 2026  ·  Previous version: July 24, 2026

Retro Weather Rewind ("we," "us," or "the channel") operates the website retroweatherrewind.com and a 24/7 retro weather livestream distributed on third-party platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X, Instagram, and Facebook. This policy explains what information is involved when you use our website and content, and — just as importantly — what we do not collect.

The short version

• We have no user accounts, no login, and no newsletter.
• We use Google Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read. It sets cookies. We run no advertising cookies, no ad networks, and no cross-site ad tracking, and we never try to identify individual visitors.
• Our own channel players send us a heartbeat while a channel is playing, so we can count how many people are watching the feeds we host. No cookie, no name, no stored IP address.
• If you use our contact form, what you type is sent to us through Formspree so we can reply. Nothing else.
• We do not sell, rent, or share personal information with anyone for marketing.
• Our social media publishing uploads our own content to our own accounts. We do not use platform APIs to collect other users' personal data.

Location for your local forecast

The website can show a forecast for your area. To do this, it asks your browser for permission to access your approximate location. If you allow it, your approximate coordinates are used in your browser to request weather data from the third-party services listed below. If you decline, the site falls back to a default U.S. location and works normally. We do not store your location on our servers, and it is never tied to your identity.

To fetch that forecast, your coordinates are sent directly from your browser to:

• National Weather Service (weather.gov) — active alerts for your area
• Open-Meteo — current conditions and forecast
• RainViewer — radar imagery
• BigDataCloud — turning coordinates into a place name

Each of these services has its own privacy policy governing how it handles the request. We do not control and are not responsible for their practices.

Analytics and cookies

We use Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-8803BH845L) on the pages of this website to understand traffic in aggregate — how many people visit, which pages and city forecasts they read, roughly where in the world they are, and whether the site works on their device. We look at this only as summary reporting; we do not use it to build profiles of individual visitors, and we never try to identify you.

To do that, Google Analytics sets its own cookies in your browser (named _ga and _ga_<id>) containing a randomly generated identifier so that repeat visits from the same browser aren't counted twice. Along with each page view, Google receives the page address, the referring page, your browser and device type, and approximate location derived from your IP address. Google Analytics 4 does not log or store IP addresses; Google processes and discards them.

We also record a small number of interaction events for the same purpose — for example, that the contact form was submitted. These carry no message content.

Counting who is watching the channel

YouTube tells us how many people watch the channel there. Nothing tells us that about the feeds we serve ourselves — the live stream player on this site, and the local-forecast channel at /local/ that our app, the Windows screensaver, the TV apps and the Cast receiver all load. So those players send us a small heartbeat, about twice a minute, for as long as a channel is actually playing on your screen. It stops when you pause it, hide the tab, or close the page.

Each heartbeat carries a random identifier generated for that one player session and kept only for that tab (in sessionStorage, which your browser clears when the tab closes), which of our surfaces it came from, which channel is playing, which of the two looks you are watching it in, which panel of the rotation is on screen at that moment (forecast, radar, almanac and so on), the ZIP code or area you asked the local channel to show and the town it is showing you, and — if you arrived by following a link — the site name that link was on, plus any campaign tag we put in the link ourselves. Never the page you came from, only the site: a web address can carry what somebody searched for, and that is not ours to keep. It sets no cookie.

On our side we keep how long each viewing session lasted, and what kind of setup was watching — phone, tablet, desktop or TV, and which browser family — worked out from the browser string your device sends with every request on the web and then kept only as that one word. And — so that one person is not counted as several — a one-way hash of your IP address and browser string, mixed with a random value we generate fresh each day and never write down. That makes the hash useless for recognising you tomorrow, or for working backwards to your address. The panels are counted the same way — as totals, so we can tell which parts of the channel people actually sit through and put the good ones on more often. We do not store your IP address or your browser string, and there is no profile of you anywhere in this. What we look at is the total: how many people are watching, on what, for how long, and how they found us.

These are the only cookies this website sets. There are no advertising cookies, no ad networks, no remarketing pixels, and no cross-site tracking. If you would rather not be counted, you can block cookies for this site in your browser, use private browsing, or install Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The site works exactly the same either way. Google's handling of the data it receives is governed by its own privacy policy.

The contact form

Our contact page uses Formspree to deliver messages. When you submit the form, the name, email address, topic, and message you typed are sent to Formspree, which forwards them to our inbox and keeps a copy in our Formspree account so we don't lose it. We use your address solely to reply to you — it is never added to a mailing list, and never shared or sold. Formspree's handling of that submission is governed by its own privacy policy. You can always skip the form and email us directly instead; the address is on the same page.

Photos and video you send us

If you use the submission form (on the website or in our apps), the file you choose is uploaded directly from your device to our private Amazon S3 storage — it does not pass through the channel's server. Along with it we store what you typed: your name, email address, the location, the credit line, the caption, and the date you gave. We also record the IP address and browser the submission came from, purely to stop abuse.

What becomes public is only ever: the photo or video itself, the credit name, the location, the caption, and the date. Your email address and IP address are never published — the email is used only to reach you about your submission.

Before anything is published we re-save photos, which strips the EXIF metadata your camera embedded — including GPS coordinates — and we strip the equivalent metadata from video. The only location that ever appears is the one you typed. Submissions we decline are deleted, and anything that never finishes uploading is deleted automatically. To have a published submission removed, email photos@retroweatherrewind.com and we'll take it down — see the Terms for the license you grant us when you submit.

Embedded video players

Some pages embed our own live stream through third-party players (currently YouTube and Rumble). When such a player loads or plays, that platform may set its own cookies or local storage and receive your IP address and the page you're viewing, exactly as if you had visited it directly. Those platforms' privacy policies apply to that activity, and we have no control over it.

Hosting and server logs

The website is hosted on Amazon Web Services (Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront). Like nearly all web infrastructure, these services may automatically record standard technical request data — such as your IP address, browser type, referring page, and the time of the request — for security, abuse prevention, and reliability. We do not use this data to identify or profile individual visitors.

Social media and the TikTok integration

We publish our weather clips and shows to social platforms, including TikTok through its Content Posting API, as well as YouTube and X through their APIs. In every case:

• We authorize access to our own channel accounts using each platform's official OAuth process, and use that access only to upload our own weather videos and captions.
• The access we request is limited to publishing our content (for example, TikTok's video.upload / video.publish and basic account-info scopes).
• We do not use these APIs to access, collect, or store personal data about other users of those platforms.
• Authorization tokens for our own accounts are stored securely on our own systems and are used only to publish our content.

When you view or interact with our content on TikTok, YouTube, or any other platform, that platform's own privacy policy and terms apply to your activity there. Any audience information we see is the aggregate, non-identifying analytics those platforms provide to us about our own posts.

Children's privacy

Our content is general-audience weather programming and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Access to our content on third-party platforms is also subject to those platforms' age requirements.

Your choices

• You can deny or revoke the browser location permission at any time in your browser settings; the site still works.
• You can opt out of analytics by blocking cookies for this site, browsing privately, or installing Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. Nothing on the site depends on being measured.
• If you've written to us and want your message and email address deleted from our inbox and our Formspree account, ask and we'll remove them.
• Because we do not maintain accounts or a marketing database, there is otherwise no personal profile for us to export or delete. If you have a question about privacy, contact us below.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our website or publishing setup changes. The effective date at the top will reflect the latest version.

Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy? Email hello@retroweatherrewind.com, or use the contact form.

Retro Weather Rewind is a fan-made tribute to the aesthetic of 1990s weather broadcasting. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to The Weather Channel or any broadcaster.
See also our Terms of Service · Contact Us · ← Back to Retro Weather Rewind