How to add pirate weather to home assistant

Hey folks, I’ve been running Home Assistant for years now, and one of the best weather setups I’ve found is Pirate Weather. It’s basically a solid replacement for the old Dark Sky integration that got shut down, pulling data from NOAA models through this open API. It’s accurate enough for my needs, especially here in the Midwest where weather flips fast, and the free tier works great without hitting limits too quick.

If you’re looking to add Pirate Weather to your Home Assistant instance, here’s the full rundown, step by step. I’ve done this a bunch of times on different setups.

First off, you need an API key. Head over to https://pirate-weather.apiable.io and sign up—it’s free for basic use, and they give you a key right away. The key just tracks usage to keep things running smooth on their end; no payment required unless you’re hammering it hard.

Next, install the integration. Most people do this through HACS, which is the easiest way.

If you don’t have HACS yet, grab it from the Home Assistant community store—go to Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration, search for HACS, and follow the prompts. You’ll need to restart HA after.

Once HACS is in, open it from the sidebar, go to Integrations, hit the three dots in the top right, and select Custom repositories. Paste in https://github.com/Pirate-Weather/pirate-weather-ha, category Integration, and add it.

Then search for Pirate Weather in HACS and install the latest version. Restart Home Assistant when it’s done.

Now to set it up. Go to Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration, and search for Pirate Weather. It should pop up.

In the setup window, enter your API key, your latitude and longitude (grab these from your HA config under Settings > System > General, or use Google Maps), and pick your units—metric or imperial depending on what you use.

You can also choose what monitored conditions you want, like if you need extra sensors for things like UV index, wind gusts, or precipitation probability. Start with the defaults if you’re not sure; you can tweak later.

Hit submit, and it should configure. You’ll get a main weather entity called something like weather.pirateweather, with current conditions and a 7-day forecast built in.

For the dashboard, just add a Weather Forecast card in Lovelace and point it to that entity. It shows current temp, conditions, highs/lows, and the next few days right out of the box.

If you want more detailed hourly or daily forecasts in cards or automations, use the weather.get_forecasts service. For example, in developer tools, you can test pulling hourly data.

A lot of folks create template sensors for specific forecast bits, like tomorrow’s high temp, but the built-in weather entity handles most stuff fine.

One tip: If your location is off or data looks weird, double-check the coords—it’s picky about precision. Also, the API updates every hour or so, matching NOAA runs.

Troubleshooting wise, if nothing shows up after install, check the logs for errors related to the API key or connection. Sometimes a bad key throws an error right away.

If you’re coming from another weather provider like OpenWeatherMap, this feels similar but with better hourly detail in my experience.

That’s pretty much it. Once it’s running, it’s set and forget—reliable and no ads or paywalls nagging you. I’ve had it going strong for over a year now without issues. If you run into snags, the GitHub repo has good docs, or hit up the HA forums. Enjoy the accurate forecasts.