User Guide
CINERA Weather Intelligence — for production teams
What is Weather Intelligence?
CINERA Weather Intelligence gives productions access to professional-grade climate data without requiring meteorological expertise. It combines real-time forecasts, live radar, 30-year climate normals, and multi-year historical records into a single dashboard designed around how productions actually plan exterior shoots.
Unlike consumer weather apps, Weather Intelligence is built for planning, not just today's conditions. You can examine what a specific month has looked like over the past decade, identify historically high-risk periods, and generate shareable briefings for your director, line producer, or AD. When your account is attached to a production, the dashboard also becomes an operational surface: monitored shoot locations, recorded weather events, and storm-approach awareness for the crew on the ground.
Plans & What Is Included
Weather Intelligence is sold per production, month-to-month, in three plans. Onboarding is handled with CINERA — locations, crew notification levels, and per-production safety thresholds are configured with you at the start and followed throughout production.
Daily Reports — $2,500/month(This plan does not include dashboard access or on-site monitoring.)
Requested weather reports for your production, delivered by email to the recipients you choose. Includes 40 requested reports per month; additional reports are $85 each. Billed monthly or for any portion of a month, and can be onboarded the same day — a fit for commercials and short-term projects.
Intelligence — $5,000/month
The full dashboard for your production — forecasting for now, 48 hours, 72 hours, 7 and 10 days, historical data, your own locations (recurring or one-off), crew notifications, safety thresholds, and storm tracking. Includes 40 requested reports per month. On-site monitoring stations are additional.
Full Intelligence — $10,000/month
Everything in Intelligence, plus one On Set station and two Off Grid stations for your recurring locations — with lightning detection and air quality live at each, 24/7, and enhanced storm tracking. Includes 100 requested reports per month. Additional stations at station pricing.
Monitoring stations — On Set $1,800/month · Off Grid $2,600/month
Fully managed: CINERA deploys, configures, operates, maintains, and replaces every station — there is no installation fee and nothing for production to look after. On Set stations travel with your unit; Off Grid stations are self-powered with satellite connectivity for recurring or remote locations.
What counts as a requested report
A report you ask CINERA to produce for a location and date range, delivered by email. Reports you generate yourself inside the dashboard (Share & Export) are part of your subscription and do not count against the monthly allowance.
Requesting Reports by Email
Every plan includes requested weather reports, delivered by email. Your production has its own request address (yourname@wx.cinera.ca) — self-serve Daily Reports productions manage it in the console at /weather/reports; onboarded productions receive theirs at onboarding. Only people on your sender list can request; every served report is also cc’d to your standing recipient list. Both lists are yours to manage in the console, including each recipient’s position.
- 1.Say where — Give GPS coordinates (e.g. 51.0447, -114.0719) or paste a full Google Maps link containing the pin. Locations your production has used before — or registered as recurring — resolve by name alone; register a location once and its street address becomes a name the system knows.
- 2.Say when — An explicit date (2026-09-01 or September 1) or a date range, up to 10 days out. Relative dates like "Friday" or "tomorrow" are not accepted — the system will ask rather than guess.
- 3.Add concerns (optional) — Mention what you are watching — wind, rain, lightning, storms, heat, or smoke/air quality — and the analysis leads with it. Mention interior or exterior and the report frames around your shoot type.
- 4.Send it — The report comes back by email covering current conditions and the 48-hour, 72-hour, 7-day, and 10-day outlook for your dates, with the AI narrative clearly labelled. If anything is unclear, you get one short clarifying question — reply with the missing detail and the report follows.
Reports count against your plan’s monthly allowance (40 on Daily Reports and Intelligence, 100 on Full Intelligence). On Daily Reports, requests beyond the allowance are still served and billed as additional reports at $85 each — the report itself notes when it is an additional one. Reports you generate yourself inside the dashboard never count against the allowance.
Getting Started
- 1.Select a location — Use the search box in the left sidebar to find any location you have scouted. The system automatically identifies the nearest Environment Canada climate station and shows its name and distance in the sidebar.
- 2.Pick your production (optional) — If you belong to one or more productions, the production switcher in the top navigation sets your active production. This unlocks the production tabs — Weather Events, Monitored Locations, and (for privileged roles) Storm Approach — and scopes them to that production.
- 3.Choose your years — Toggle years in the Year Comparison panel to select which historical seasons to overlay. Up to 5 years can be compared at once.
- 4.Navigate the tabs — Forecast shows the 10-day outlook. Radar shows live and forecast precipitation, smoke, and cloud layers. Climate Normals shows historical patterns. Shoot Plan gives a day-by-day production view.
- 5.Generate an AI summary — On the Climate Normals tab, use the "Generate AI Summary" button to produce a plain-language narrative of historical conditions for your selected month. A usage counter next to the button shows how many generations you have used today.
- 6.Share or export — Open the Share & Export menu in the sidebar to download a Forecast or Historical report as .docx, create a read-only share link, or email the report as an attachment.
The Dashboard Tabs
Four tabs are always available once a location is selected. Three more appear when you are working in a production context — they are scoped to your active production, and one of them is visible only to privileged production roles.
Forecast
A 48-hour hourly forecast plus a 10-day daily outlook from ECCC NWP models. Two models feed the page and each day is stated once, by the better model for its range: the high-resolution 2.5 km HRDPS covers today and tomorrow, and the 15 km GEM Global carries the outlook beyond — the label under the Extended Outlook names exactly that split. Shows temperature, precipitation probability, wind speed and direction, cloud cover, and UV index. Ten days is the far edge of the GEM Global model — treat the last few days as trend, not detail. The Wind Card in the corner tracks the dominant wind direction and gust peaks for the forecast period.
Radar
A weather map with a unified layer picker and a single past-to-future timeline. Choose one base layer at a time — precipitation radar, wildfire smoke, or cloud cover where available — then scrub or play the timeline through observed history and forecast frames. A lightning overlay can be toggled on top of any layer, and the map style switcher offers satellite (the default), dark, and light bases. Data attribution for the active layer is shown on the map itself.
Climate Normals
The core planning tool. Select a production month and review 30-year climate normals alongside historical data from your selected years. Temperature and precipitation charts show you what to expect and how variable conditions have been. Every surface states the normals window it used (1991–2020 or 1981–2010, chosen per station), and when a figure had to come from the older window — sunshine hours, the 40/50 km/h wind-day counts — the report says so in plain language. Use the "Generate AI Summary" button to produce a production-focused narrative.
Shoot Plan
A condensed day-by-day view of upcoming conditions, optimized for scheduling exterior work. Useful for identifying shoot windows during a production week or flagging days that may require cover sets or schedule flexibility. Plans carry a Known Hazards section, and can be shared by link, exported as .docx, or printed — days beyond the model horizon are filled from historical averages for those calendar dates and labelled as such, never presented as forecast.
Weather Events(production context)
The record of weather events at your monitored locations — periods where safety thresholds were crossed, such as lightning holds, wind, or heat. Each closed event has a View link that opens the full in-app event record, a Download PDF export, and its own share link for distributing the record outside CINERA. Event share links are separate from weather report share links.
Monitored Locations(production context)
The registry of shoot coordinates CINERA actively monitors for your production. Anyone on the production can view the registry; registering and managing locations is limited to privileged roles.
Storm Approach(production context, privileged roles)
A live operational view for approaching storm cells and smoke plumes around your monitored locations: a tracking map with current readings and confidence indicators. Movement classification and arrival-time countdowns appear as they are enabled for your production. This tab is only present for users holding a privileged weather role on the production.
Working in a Production Context
The production switcher in the weather navigation sets your active production, and the dashboard remembers it between visits. Everything production-scoped — events, monitored locations, storm approach, alert recipients, and team access — follows the active production.
Alerting is two-sided: when a monitored location crosses a safety threshold or a storm approach is flagged, the production team is notified — and when the hazard passes or the event closes, a cleared / stand-down notice follows on the same channels, so the team knows when it is safe to resume without checking the dashboard.
Sharing and Exporting Reports
All report actions live in a single Share & Export menu in the sidebar, available once a location is selected.
Forecast Report (.docx)
A document built from the current 10-day forecast and ensemble analysis — the operational briefing for an upcoming shoot week.
Historical Report (.docx)
A document built from climate normals and your selected comparison years — the planning briefing for a future production window. Enable "Include AI Narrative in .docx" in Settings to automatically include the generated narrative when present.
Share Link
Generates a read-only URL containing a snapshot of the full current report — forecast and ensemble analysis when loaded, climate normals, historical data, and the AI narrative if generated. The recipient does not need a CINERA account. Links expire after 7 days and can be revoked from the Reports section of Settings.
Email Report
Sends a .docx weather report to any email address, with an optional note in the email body. Up to 10 emails per account per day.
Print / Save as PDF
Renders the current report as a clean print layout through your browser’s print dialog — the fastest way to a PDF. The printed document carries the same content and provenance as the on-screen report and the .docx export.
Shoot Plan exports
The Shoot Plan tab has its own share link, .docx export, and print layout, carrying the plan’s day-by-day breakdown and Known Hazards.
Every exported report states its own provenance: the exact date range it covers, the climate-normals window behind its averages, and the observation sources behind its historical actuals — so two documents generated weeks apart can always be compared on their own terms.
Settings
Settings is organized as a set of pages with a sidebar. Each page groups related preferences; production-scoped sections follow your active production.
Display
Theme (dark or light, applied across all Weather Intelligence pages) and units (metric °C, mm, km/h or imperial °F, in, mph).
Dashboard
Default location — the location that loads automatically when you open the dashboard — and preferred station, which overrides the automatic nearest-station selection when you want data from a specific EC climate station.
Notifications
Weather alert emails for your saved locations.
Reports
Everything about report output: the "Include AI Narrative in .docx" export toggle, your active share links with the option to revoke each one, the Forecast Accuracy card showing how the models have been performing at your locations, and your email-report quota for the day (shown as N of 10).
Production
Team access for your active production, the Monitored Locations registry, and the status of the approach-threshold OHS sign-off.
The Mobile App
CINERA Weather is also available as a mobile app, currently distributed through TestFlight. It carries the same forecast and radar experience — including the unified layer picker and timeline — for use on set, where a phone is usually closer to hand than a laptop.
Data Sources
CINERA Weather Intelligence processes the same professional-grade meteorological data used by commercial weather services and government planning tools:
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
Observations, climate normals (1991–2020 where ECCC publishes them for the station, otherwise 1981–2010), weather alerts, radar and smoke imagery, and two forecast models: HRDPS high-resolution deterministic (2.5 km, to 48 hours) and GEM Global (15 km, to 10 days).
Open-Meteo
High-resolution NWP reanalysis and ensemble modelling used for global coverage and historical backfill beyond EC station ranges.
On-Site Stations
Where a CINERA Tempest weather station is deployed at a location, real-time hyperlocal observations supplement the forecast layer with ground-truth conditions.
Personal Weather Stations
Nearby community stations (Weather Underground network) provide independent surface observations, used both in the multi-source ensemble and as ground truth for CINERA’s ongoing forecast-accuracy verification.
Weather is inherently variable. All forecasts carry uncertainty — conditions beyond 2–3 days should inform planning, not replace operational judgement. See the Weather Intelligence Terms for full data usage disclosures.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is the forecast data?↓
The 10-day forecast is sourced from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Open-Meteo NWP models. Accuracy is comparable to commercial weather services, and decays with lead time — the first 48 hours carry real detail, days 8-10 are directional only. CINERA displays raw model output — for productions with specific risk thresholds, supplement with on-site monitoring.
Where does the climate normals data come from?↓
Climate normals come from ECCC's 30-year climatological datasets — the same reference used by aviation, agriculture and government planning. ECCC publishes two windows, and CINERA uses the newer 1991–2020 one wherever it exists for the station serving your location; the rest stay on 1981–2010, which is the only window published for roughly two thirds of Canadian stations. Every report names the window it used, and says so when a figure the newer window does not publish — sunshine hours, and the counts of days above 40 and 50 km/h — was taken from the same station's older record. The nearest EC climate station is selected automatically, and you can pin a specific station under Settings → Dashboard.
What is Open-Meteo and when is it used?↓
Open-Meteo is a high-resolution NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) reanalysis system. CINERA uses it as a fallback for locations that lack a nearby EC climate station, or when requesting historical data beyond the active range of the nearest station.
How does the AI Summary work?↓
The AI summary synthesizes climate normals and multi-year historical summaries into a plain-language briefing for your production. It identifies typical conditions, notable risk windows, and production-relevant patterns. It is not a forecast — it describes what a given month has historically been like at that location. On the Forecast tab, a related ensemble analysis synthesizes the live data sources into one operational assessment.
Can I share a report with someone who doesn't have a CINERA account?↓
Yes. Use Share Link in the Share & Export menu to generate a read-only link that anyone can open without signing in. Links expire after 7 days. You can also email the report as a .docx attachment directly from the dashboard.
What is the email report daily limit?↓
Each account can send up to 10 email reports per day. The limit resets once a day. If you need to distribute reports widely, use the share link instead. Your remaining quota for the day is shown in Settings → Reports.
How do I set a default location?↓
Go to Settings → Dashboard → Default Location and search for a location from your scouted locations. The dashboard will load that location automatically on your next visit.
What does the weather alert banner show?↓
The banner displays active Environment Canada weather alerts for the area around your selected location — things like special weather statements, rainfall warnings, and winter storm watches. It updates when you load or change location.
What is the Shoot Plan tab?↓
The Shoot Plan tab provides a day-by-day forecast view optimized for scheduling — showing conditions most relevant to exterior filming (precipitation probability, wind, cloud cover). It helps producers and coordinators identify the best shooting windows within your production window.
What is a weather event record, and how do I share one?↓
When a monitored location crosses a safety threshold — a lightning hold, for example — CINERA records the period as a weather event with the thresholds crossed and its duration. On the Weather Events tab, each closed event offers View (the full in-app record), Download PDF, and Copy share link. Event share links are their own links, separate from weather report share links.
How does CINERA track forecast accuracy over time?↓
Weather Intelligence automatically archives NWP model predictions at the time they are issued and compares them against real observations after those times have passed — from on-site stations and nearby personal weather stations where available, and METAR airport observations otherwise. Error metrics — RMSE and signed bias by forecast horizon — accumulate in the Forecast Accuracy card under Settings → Reports. A positive temperature bias means the model has been running warm at your location; negative means running cold. Once enough verifications accumulate, the AI uses this data to calibrate its analysis narrative.
Can I use this for international locations?↓
The current system is optimized for Canadian locations using ECCC data. Open-Meteo coverage extends globally, so you can load any location — but climate normals will typically only be available for Canadian EC stations. International normals support is planned.