Every 3 hours

Get warned before frost, snow or extreme heat

You hear about the weather only when freezing, snow or heat over your limit is forecast.

Runs: Every 3 hours
Apps: OpenWeatherMap
AI: Not needed
Access: API key

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 3 hours, check the forecast for Denver and email me once if it will drop below 0°C, snow, or go above 35°C.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A gardener with a greenhouse, a roofer booking jobs, a cyclist and a small-event organizer all care about the same thing: not whether it is nice, but whether something bad is coming. Checking a forecast app every few hours is tiring, and the one time you skip it is when a frost kills your seedlings, a downpour ruins a delivery, or a heatwave arrives while staff work outside. Missed warnings can mean lost plants, wasted days and safety risks.

Every three hours, the forecast for your location is fetched from OpenWeatherMap and compared with thresholds you set, such as below freezing, snow, more than 5 mm of rain, or above 32 degrees. If one is met, you get an alert; the same event is reported only once, so you are not nagged every three hours.

It is useful for anyone whose plans or property depend on a specific kind of weather.

What you get out of it

Frost and heat damage can be avoided
A freezing warning the evening before lets you cover plants, drain pipes or bring pets inside. The cost of one lost crop can exceed years of using the alert. That one protective step often justifies the whole setup.
Jobs get rescheduled in time
A roofer or painter who learns about rain a day ahead can swap jobs and keep the crew busy. Learning about it on the morning leaves paid workers standing idle.
Only important weather interrupts you
Because nothing is sent on ordinary days, an alert carries weight. You notice it, whereas a daily report of fine weather would soon be ignored. A short silence between alerts is itself reassuring news.
Safety risks are flagged early
Extreme heat or heavy snow affects outdoor staff, school runs and travel. Hearing about it hours ahead gives you time to alter shifts or routes sensibly. Acting early is much cheaper than coping with the consequences.
No repeated nagging
Each weather event triggers one alert, not a message every cycle while it remains in the forecast. That keeps the alerts from turning into background noise. That is why the alerts remain useful for months rather than being muted after a week.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 3 hours, ClickRuntime checks the forecast for your city on OpenWeather.
It looks for freezing temperatures, snow, or heat over 35°C.
You get an email listing each time and condition it found, with the temperature.
Each type of alert is sent only once per day, so you are not warned about the same frost twice.

Before it runs live

Connect OpenWeatherMap

What you get

RunsEvery 3 hours

Get warned before frost, snow or extreme heattoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Denver weather alert2026-10-22 06:00: freeze (-3°C, light snow) 2026-10-22 09:00: snow (-1°C, snow)

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other OpenWeatherMap steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

weather_alerts.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

CITY = "Denver,US"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    forecast = http.get("https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast",
                        params={"q": CITY, "units": "metric", "appid": credentials.secret("OPENWEATHER_API_KEY")}).json()
    alerted = set(state.get("alerted") or [])
    new = []
    for f in forecast["list"]:
        day, temp, main = f["dt_txt"][:10], f["main"]["temp"], f["weather"][0]["main"]
        for kind, hit in (("freeze", temp < 0), ("snow", main == "Snow"), ("heat", temp > 35)):
            if hit and f"{day}:{kind}" not in alerted:
                alerted.add(f"{day}:{kind}")
                new.append(f"{day} {f['dt_txt'][11:16]}: {kind} ({temp:.0f}°C, {f['weather'][0]['description']})")
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"alerts": 0}
    notify.email_me("Denver weather alert", "\n".join(new))
    state.set("alerted", sorted(alerted)[-60:])
    return {"alerts": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

What thresholds can I use?

Temperature highs and lows, rain amounts, snow, wind speed and weather conditions such as thunderstorms are all available from the forecast data. You pick the values that matter for your plants, work or event. Many people start with just frost and rain, then add heat or wind later.

How far ahead does it warn me?

OpenWeatherMap's forecast covers about five days in three-hour steps, and the check looks across that window. You can limit it to the next 24 hours if you only want alerts for imminent conditions. You can narrow the window if that suits you better.

Will it alert again if the forecast changes?

An event is alerted once, and a new alert is sent only if a fresh event appears, such as a different day crossing the threshold. Forecasts can shift between checks, so a second alert later is possible.

What permissions does it need?

API key. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

The moment it happens