When Grandma L and I were stumped about how this could have happened, we talked with our nephew Lee Drahushuk, whom you guys know - he’s a Pokémaniac and also very smart….and he had a great idea that seemed like it might be the solution. Lee suggested that maybe it was because our house and the Madeira Fountain gym were in different S2 cells….what??
Lee explained that features of Pokémon Go that vary geographically (including weather!) are organized by a system invented by Google for use in geographical mapping. Google’s system, called S2 geocoding (follow the link and read about it - very interesting!), divides the globe up into regions of identical shape and size in a way that can be quickly accessed by software.
In Pokémon Go, the weather is determined independently for each S2 “level 10” size cell. Thus, Lee suggested that maybe, when we drove from our house to the Madeira Fountain Gym, we might have moved from one S2 cell into another one that had different weather. So, to see if this was true, we went online to PogoMap and looked at the Level 10 S2 cells (used for weather) in Indian Hill and Madeira. The result, shown below, was pretty amazing!
Our house is indicated by the blue asterisk a little bit below the intersecting vertical and horizontal blue lines. The intersecting lines mark the edges of four adjacent square-shaped S2 cells. Amazingly, our house is pretty close to the place where these cells meet, so we could walk about a hundred yards north, or northeast or east and pass from “our” S2 cell to a different one. And, indeed, The Madeira Fountain Gym (blue “4”) is in a different cell than our house! Clearly the Altered Giratina wasn’t boosted because the Gym is in a different S2 cell than our house and it had been assigned different weather!
Challenge question: which gym is guaranteed to have the same weather as we see when we’re at our house? (Grandpa and Grandma will give a reward to first one of HOE to answer correctly!)
Now we plan to keep an eye on the weather posted on Pokémon as we walk around our neighborhood to see if it changes when we cross the lines!
Update:
Proof that S2 Controls the Weather!
On the left below, Grandpa’s avatar (indicated by the red arrow) is walking south on N. Clippinger Drive towards our house (blue asterisk). (South is at the top in these pictures, unlike the map above). The time (1:30 pm) is shown by the black lettering at top center, and the weather (yellow arrow) is CLOUDY.
In the right picture, taken only one minute later (at 1:31), Grandpa has walked past the street going off to the right (only about 25 feet), and….WOW!…….the weather (yellow arrow) is shown as WINDY! This difference in weather is happening in the middle of the hour, when the game’s weather doesn’t change, demonstrating that the weather differs in the two areas and Grandpa just crossed from one to the other….compare the screenshots below with the S2 map above! (But note that the S2 map has North at the top, whereas South is at the top in the screenshots).
