How to Get an Email Before It Rains
Updated September 1, 2026
The forecast is always somewhere — an app, a widget, a website. The problem is you have to remember to look, and the one day you forget is the day it pours on your commute.
What you actually want is the opposite: silence on dry days, and a note in your inbox the evening before rain. Here's how people set that up.
The do-it-yourself options
Weather apps can push rain notifications, but they're chatty — pollen counts, wind advisories, 'feels like' updates — and the one alert you care about drowns in the noise. They also live on one phone; email lives everywhere.
Automation tools (IFTTT has a classic 'email me if rain is forecast' applet) get closer. You'll need an account, the right applet, and some patience when the weather service behind it changes.
Some calendar apps show a forecast on the day — which still relies on you opening the calendar and noticing.
The one-sentence way
With MailMeWhen you write the request the way you'd say it to a person: name your city, say you want a heads-up the day before rain. Then forget about it — on dry weeks you hear nothing at all.
The first 7 days are free with no payment details; after that it's $5/month, and it stops by itself if you don't subscribe. One reply stops it any time.
Good to know
This is an event-driven request: letters arrive only when the condition is met, which is exactly what makes it useful. If you'd rather get a daily weather summary instead, write that — the sentence is the setting.
Forecasts are forecasts. A heads-up letter beats being surprised, but it can't promise the sky anything.
Try it — hand us this sentence:
I live in New York. Mail me the day before rain is expected, so I remember the umbrella.