About
About Utu
A calm weather app, made by one person in Oregon.
The word
Haze or mist. The soft veil in the air that makes far-off things gentle.
1Miles awayThe far ridge
2A few milesThe hills between
3The valleyUtu
4Right hereThe near hill
- 1The far ridgeSo much air in between that it’s barely a line against the sky.
- 2The hills betweenSofter and paler. You can tell they’re there, but the details are gone.
- 3UtuCool, damp air settles low and holds the light. Everything behind it goes gentle.
- 4The near hillClose and clear. Every tree and fence post.
I live in the Willamette Valley, where a lot of mornings start in exactly this haze. The app icon is the same picture: hills, a rising sun, and mist in the valley.
It’s also what I want Utu to do with the weather. Not hide anything. Just soften the edges until it’s easy to take in.
Why Utu
I wanted checking the weather to feel like glancing out the window, not reading a dashboard.
Most weather apps show you everything at once: numbers, maps, radar, alerts. It’s all useful, and very little of it is the thing you wanted to know.
Utu writes the forecast as a sentence first, like a friend who already looked: soft drizzle until about 3, then a calm evening. The numbers are still there when you want them.
Who’s making it
I’m David. I design and build software, and I live in Salem, Oregon, with my wife and our two boys. I’m also a songwriter: a few of my songs have ended up on network TV, and I play in a band called My Brothers And I.
I make these apps with Claude, an AI from Anthropic, as my coding partner. I decide what each app is and how it should feel: the design, the details, the way it behaves. Claude and I write the code together and catch each other’s mistakes.
I build the things I wish already existed: quiet, well-made tools that respect your time and your privacy. If one of them makes your day a little calmer, that’s the whole point.
Firn · Utu · Nynna. The David Wurgler apps.