Reader Challenge: Can You Find The Weather?

By now we all use Gmail for our personal E-mail and most of us are utilizing a cool theme. You might be using Summer Ocean or Beach if you have a tropical vacation coming up. Maybe you use Phantasea or Mountains if you want to pretend like you are in nature while you’re reading your email. Or if you’re a nerd you could be using Planets or Terminal (Terminal’s tight!). There are tons of cool pre-built themes for Gmail. The only exception is Zoozimps. I just can’t possibly see any reason for using that theme.

I personally prefer the theme called Tree because it changes with the weather. All you have to do is type in your city when you select the theme and it takes care of the rest. It’s awesome, and also very accurate. No joke – one time I was checking my email and saw that it was snowing on the screen behind my emails and then I turned my head and looked out the window and sure enough it was snowing. Had it not been for my Gmail theme I might have never known! Based on this principal I have thought of a really fun challenge that you can do. It’s pretty hard because I haven’t even been able to complete it yet. So it’s hard and it’s fun. At least it’s fun, though.

I have been using the Tree theme for about 4 months and up to this point I have only noticed about 4 different weather possibilities. That is until today, when my Gmail suddenly showed a dark and ominous sky that I had never seen before – even during rain. It scared me. It really really scared me. No it didn’t, but anyway I wanted to find out just how many different types of weather my theme was capable of showing me. It turns out there are a total of 12 possible variations of the Tree theme!

Here’s what I usually see:

And here’s what punched me in the face and gave me a dose of reality today:

So dark, I know! Really really scary. Not really, but you can imagine my shock nonetheless. Ever think you’re about to take a big swig of coke and it turns out to be ice tea? You have to be careful in this life. On with the challenge.

So the first ever (and probably last) TGM reader challenge is: can you find all 12? Here’s how to play:

1. Change your Gmail theme to “Tree”:
   • In Gmail, click Settings (top right)
   • Click the Themes tab
   • Click “Tree” (about halfway down the list)
   • Make sure your location is correct (below the list of themes)
2. Note your current weather and then have a look at all 12 possible weather conditions so you’ll know what yours is called (sunny? hazy? cloudy?)
3. Now here’s the hard part: change your city until you find all 12 conditions

So far I have been able to find 6 of the 12. The way I did it was to look at current weather maps and then change my city in Gmail to where it looks like that weather is. For instance, I saw a bunch of rain over Kentucky this morning, so I changed my city to Lexington in Gmail and just like that it was rainy and all my emails were wet (literally – this theme is sweet!)

Tip: each time you change your city, make sure you refresh your browser to see your new weather.

The 12 possibilities are:

1. sunny
2. hazy
3. windy
4. foggy
5. mostly cloudy
6. cloudy
7. rainy
8. stormy
9. thunderstorm
10. icy
11. flurries
12. snowy

Here are the ones I’ve found so far:

Sunny In El Paso

Mostly Cloudy In Cleveland

Cloudy In Alexandria (Louisiana)

Rainy In Lexington

And finally, I’ll help you out with a gem I was able to find today:

Hazy In Los Angeles

So, it’s up to you to find the 6 remaining weather conditions: windy, foggy, icy, thunderstorm, flurries, and snowy. Take a screenshot and post it in the comments (do my comments accept screenshots?) or at least the city, weather condition, and time. I bet thunderstorm is the rarest, and fog is probably hard to snag too. I wish they would add the following conditions: sleet, hail, tornado, hurricane, humid (90%+) and sweltering (100°+).

Good luck and enjoy the weather!