I Built a 90s Weather Channel App in 30 Minutes With AI

In half an hour, I built a 1990s Weather Channel-style app featuring Michigan weather. Zero coding. Just Claude, the AI builder site Bolt.new, and some screenshots of the classic TWC look.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I watched the Weather Channel this time of year just to know that somewhere, out there in a distant land far from Michigan, the skies were not gray, the ground not frozen.

Now, deep in Michigan’s gray season, I recreated the TWC vibe.

Building the app

The first thing I did was find some screenshots of that 90s Weather Channel vibe, which I uploaded to Bolt. I told Claude what I wanted to include and it organized and cleaned up the prompt for me, which I pasted into Bolt.

Bolt wrote the code. Five minutes later, the app was running, using data from the National Weather Service API.

Radar? No problem.

It’s a reasonable first pass compared to the real thing:

All that’s missing is that Yacht Rock-adjecent, light jazz soundtrack. But don’t worry. I have you covered with an Apple Music playlist right here:

This app is a rudimentary example, but it does illustrate that any of us, even without coding expertise, can now create our own online tools with our own vibe. And this ability is getting easier to implement and more powerful all the time.

And I’m not quite done with the weather app.

Next up: I’ll tackle refinements: a wind speed bug, adjusting the fonts, and migrating to a more permanent home.