Avoiding the cloud is a good tip. It's weird to trigger a device then have that communication bounce around to different servers only to come back just to turn on a light bulb a few feet away. If one of those companies goes under or decides to shutdown the service your device is probably useless. If the internet is down so is your light bulb.
IMO the way to go is to slowly transition, and avoid systems, hardware and softwares that depends on the cloud as much as possible. If you can, try to stick to one open standard and don't deviate unless you have absolutely no choice.
You should be able to disconnect the Internet and control everything locally on your home wireless network. If you can't, then you don't own it.
Sure, you can make some automation rely on some weather services (OpenWeatherMap), but you could go one step further and deploy your own weather station on your property (ie: attached to the shed, etc). That way even if the Internet goes out, you can still automate based on local data.
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