Best Guess Why Some Weather Apps Showed Denver At -0 Degrees Saturday

DENVER (CBS4) - Twitter was busy in Denver Saturday morning with several people posting screen shots of their weather app showing Denver at minus zero degrees. Comments from metro area tweeters ranged from "what is negative zero" to "I don't think negative zero is a thing."

Here's my best explanation for why this likely happened. In meteorology we measure air temperature in tenths of a degree, but then round to the nearest whole number.

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So if the actual air temperature was between -0.4°F and -0.1°F, while that rounds to 0°F, this particular automated app likely left the minus sign because the temperature was on the negative side of the 0°F mark.

I am not a programmer so I can't say for sure but that is my best guess. All the tweeters seemed to be using the same app for their weather information, which is fully automated and has no influence from local meteorologists.

So that leads me to inviting anyone reading this story to download the free CBS4 Weather App which has a ton of user-friendly and interactive features for not only Colorado but the entire world.

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While hourly reports are automated like most apps, you will also have access to locally produced video forecasts and other cool information which is updated at least 2 to 4 times each day, depending on how active the weather is at the time.

Just search CBS Denver Weather in your app store.