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In Colorado we've had record low temperatures for February.

No, you had record cold temperatures in February -- you ignore the other days mentioned in your own article:

The cold snap came amid a wild, roller coaster swing. Denver had a high temperature of 69 degrees on Sunday, and then the temperature dropped to a low of minus 3 degrees at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday. The 72-degree swing is the 13th widest on record, spanning 147 years, in Denver in a 36- to 48-hour time range, according to the weather service.

Similarly

A trend which carried on in March

Two days, again according to your own article.

Your February wasn't even in your top 20 coldest Februarys, so it's hard to see what trend carried into March.

Maybe flooding is due to more moisture?? Like, say from a rare event that dropped a lot more moisture across a wide region than normal??

Funny how those rare events keep increasing in frequency.

Gets hot? Global warming as predicted.

Gets cold? Climate change as predicted.

When did it get cold?

Just because you're individually cold doesn't mean the planet is colder.

That's the whole point of the polar vortex, it's isn't the planet getting colder, it's cold air from the pole coming down and your nice warm air going somewhere else.

If you're in the US, the NOAA website at https://www.weather.gov/ is probably your best bet. I know you can get radar images from there -- I clicked around enough at one point and found the raw frames nicely sorted by location. I'm fairly certain that's where all the weather sites get their data, anyway. With how bad places like Weather Underground has been getting lately (it keeps switching to a blank page on my smart phone for example and is otherwise insanely slow with all of its useless JS nonsense), I almost want to make my own weather site using that data. But haven't gotten around to it yet :)

As of July 2018, the default "enhanced version" of each National Weather Service radar loop still uses Flash. The "standard version" uses an animated GIF.

Examples: standard radar loop for Northern Indiana; enhanced radar loop for Northern Indiana

As of July 2018, the default "enhanced version" of each National Weather Service radar loop still uses Flash. The "standard version" uses an animated GIF.

Examples: standard radar loop for Northern Indiana; enhanced radar loop for Northern Indiana

Actually, in general, yes, they are.

Maybe this is OT, but I've found that forecast.weather.gov is the best weather site by far, that I "discovered" after years of futzing with ad-laden commercial sites that force you to click 4 times to find out the inches of snow predicted, if you can find it at all. And the geeky hourly graphs are wonderful, with what I'd call a close to perfect information display.

A couple of years ago a UX designer "simplified" the front page with less information and wide margins so that you needed full screen to avoid horizontal scrolling. I complained bitterly to them, maybe other people did too, and thankfully they reverted to the original layout.

Is that why the map on this website doesn't pan reliably on Google Chrome mobile? 7-Day Forecast for Latitude 43.66ÂN and Longitude 70.27ÂW (Elev. 7 ft) I just tried Mozilla Firefox mobile. Works much better in that app.

The part I don't get is why people use AccuWeather. The National Weather Service has extremely high quality forecasts right there on their web page, and if you visit http://mobile.weather.gov/ in your iOS device and tap "Share/Add To Home Screen", it's wrapped up behind an icon and "acts" like an app. As a plus, you've already paid for them with your taxes. And they have no privacy violating trackers on their page, not even a google analytics link.

Most importantly, you're not feeding some shitty company who has been trying to make the National Weather Service lock up our public weather data, and who bought and paid for a U.S. senator for exactly that purpose.

I too rely on Weather.gov, a service of the National Weather Service. But NWS operates only in the United States, and many people who often travel internationally don't want to have to find, install, and learn a different website for each country to which they travel. I'd bet some countries don't even have a counterpart to Weather.gov, either because they're poor or because they've enacted a counterpart to Rick Santorum's NWS Duties bill. This failed bill would have banned NWS from issuing any information to the public other than severe weather alerts, precisely to boost the business of AccuWeather in Santorum's district.

In addition, NWS's radar loop is still using Adobe Flash Player unless you click the out-of-the-way "standard version". First I load the 7-day forecast for San Diego, home of Slashdot Media. Then I scroll down to "Radar & Satellite Image", click the radar picture, and then click "Reflectivity: Base Loop" at the left. It doesn't load because it's SWF, and this PC has no Flash Player installed. But if I click Standard Version at the top left, it loads as a GIF. I'd bet a lot of others couldn't find this.

Just go to Weather Underground instead, you don't need an 'app'. Or if you think that's too commercial and you're going to get tracked, then just go to the National Weather Service. Seriously, you don't need an 'app' for everything.

This, for the love of whatever deity or holy person you worship, this.

OK, I'm on Android, the web browser works well so I tend not to see the cause to have an App and a half for every web service I access. Not sure about IOS, I like to maintain my standards.

I can think of three reasons you'd use an app over a web service.

1. You need content offline. 99% of my web services require live results (I.E. bank, weather, news).

2. You need access to local compute resources or hardware that is not accessible remotely. I.E. accelerometer or gyroscope. Thinking of navigation apps.

3. Your browser is so shitty it cant render anything as well as a laptop/desktop. Never encountered this since getting my first Android phone.

The overwhelming majority of apps do not meet any of these criteria. I suspect most of them are simply tools for collecting data.

Also, smug mode on, for all the vaunted security of IOS, it turns out this is right under their noses and I suspect is very wide spread.

Just go to Weather Underground instead, you don't need an 'app'. Or if you think that's too commercial and you're going to get tracked, then just go to the National Weather Service. Seriously, you don't need an 'app' for everything.

Man, there was a lot of argument on this. Yes, wet-bulb and dry-bulb are different, which is why I referenced the relative humidity. NOAA has a handy calculator

1. The summary mentioned "dangerous" wet bulb temps above 31 and "deadly" above 35 (with no mention of 40). At my cited 45C (dry bulb) mark, that corresponds to relative humidities of ~38% and 52% respectively. The temperatures I observed were relatively dry, but I don't recall the exact humidity.
2. The guy who cites Texas temps of 107F and 77% humidity wins the prize. Y'all ought to be dead.
3. As an overweight middle-aged male of Northern European ancestry, I certainly wouldn't want to try living in these temps! It's 31C in my house at night right now, and that's plenty hot enough for me.

"Default" yes, "only" no.

At the top of National Weather Service's radar pages is a link "Go to Standard Version". NWS refers to the animated GIF as "Standard Version" and the Flash animation as "Enhanced Version". For example, "standard" radar for IWX (Northern Indiana) looks like this: no terrain layer but still usable for many.

Do they need to disclose this? It is a private company. Sure the information is really important sometimes, but it's still a private service.

National Weather Service - their website weather.gov

The Weather Channel - their website weather.com

Please learn the difference and which one the article is about.

A rain belt shift that sees the Midwest and the Plains become more and more drought prone is going to have a pretty major effect on a country of over 300 million people.

A rain belt shift that saw the Midwest become more and more drought prone would indeed have a pretty major effect.

Fortunately, it's not happening. Quite the opposite. Average rainfall in Missouri is trending upwards, and is higher now than it has been since at least 1900.

Online Wii games stopped working just a few years after they were released... why?

Two reasons. First, Wii online multiplayer matchmaking was through GameSpy, and GameSpy went out of business a little over a year after the Wii U was released. Second, GameSpy's library was linked statically into each Wii game, and Nintendo neglected to include a patching mechanism for disc games in IOS, the operating system of the Wii. Nor could it issue an update to IOS to allow this because of the Wii's anemic (0.5 GB) internal storage. (The same lack of space is why downloadable "channels" (applications) were limited to about 40 MB.) So even if it wanted to issue a patch to allow use of third-party game servers, it had no official means to do so.

I even miss the little world weather thing. I'd often pop in to just twirl the globe for a moment... it couldn't possibly cost anything significant to run the freakin' weather server, could it?

Yes. Licensing current conditions and forecasts from a commercial service with worldwide coverage costs money. Some national government agencies, such as the National Weather Service in the United States, provide without charge, but those are specific to each country, and integrating all countries' weather information also costs engineering time=money.

At the top of any SWF-based National Weather Service radar loop, you can follow the "Standard Version" link at the top to get an animated GIF instead. The "National Radar Mosaic Sectors" at the bottom are also animated GIFs.

At the top of any SWF-based National Weather Service radar loop, you can follow the "Standard Version" link at the top to get an animated GIF instead. The "National Radar Mosaic Sectors" at the bottom are also animated GIFs.

At the top of any SWF-based National Weather Service radar loop, you can follow the "Standard Version" link at the top to get an animated GIF instead. The "National Radar Mosaic Sectors" at the bottom are also animated GIFs.

Nope.

If you've got a point to make, try citing some genuine data.

Et tu, Brute? no mention of minimum or maximum temperatures, only the average of the "average", everybody should know an average of the averages is statistical bullshit;

Definitions for the data Preliminary Climate Data(Form F-6) define

Maximum temperature. This is the highest temperature (F) recorded for the calendar day.,
Minimum temperature. This is the lowest temperature (F) recorded for the calendar day,
Average temperature. The sum of the previous two columns, divided by 2, and rounded, gives the value for this column.
Understanding the Preliminary Monthly Climate Data (WS Form F-6)

likewise no mention of adjustment methodologies, data gridding, or overall quality of the measurement; Hell they didn't even give confidence levels!

Click on Parent until you get to the top of the thread, then try to tell me I am wrong that renewable is less reliable than nuclear/hydro/fossil power. You are the one hopping into the middle of a thread and claiming things that weren't in the earlier discussion. Also, arguing in a sibling of this post that we are talking about home renewables when the whole thread was about grid scale, now you are claiming that grid is more reliable because a cloud can't cover large sections of the grid.

Anyways, yes, cloud cover can cover large sections of the grid. When storms roll through the US, they can cover whole regions, and so your point is that we can have enough spare solar/wind to back up a quarter of the country at a time? You seem to not understand how power grids work. You are also arguing that cloud cover and losing all your solar power generation at night isn't an issue, as that is the thread you are replying to, so how can you argue that point?

If solar is more reliable, while still going out every night, and having cloud cover negatively effect it, but nuclear is extremely unreliable in comparison (the argument at the very beginning of this thread), then I would love to know what world you are living in.

http://www.weather.gov/satelli...

So, how will you backup that half the map that is covered with clouds right now? Solar power is nearly useless when it is cloudy, so, please enlighten me on how wrong I am that this is somehow more reliable than nuclear/hydro/fossil.

What if the climate changes and New York ends up with massive frequent flooding and all those extra people?

Sea level rise would be much more catastrophic for NYC than frequent flooding. Much of NYC, especially Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens are below, at, or just a few feet above sea level. Most of the infrastructure (electric, natural gas, telephone/telecom, steam -- yes steam, subways, etc. etc., etc.) is actually underground. During hurricaine Sandy, Significant swaths of NYC were flooded, leaving hundreds of thousands without power, some for weeks. A general sea level rise of even one meter would put much of NYC (as well as the rest of Long Island) underwater. Once that happens, the next big storm will kill thousands and leave much of the city uninhabitable. So much for NYC as the center of the world. The same is true for many other coastal cities -- Miami, Los Angeles, etc. New Orleans is just the beginning.

And forget about Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and on and on and on.

We're looking at population dislocations from coastal/island areas in the hundreds of millions -- if not more than a billion people. This is going to be really bad. And we aren't doing anything worthwhile about it. I just hope I don't live long enough to see it.

I don't think "spring" has a standardized or universal definition. There is certainly no "official start of spring" or other such nonsense. I believe the National Weather Service in the US goes with March 1. Austrailia seems to agree, though obviously it is swapped with autumn down under. The UK seems to "officially" recognize both the astronomical and traditional definitions.

What time did NSW "nailed it"?

I will take "4:11 AM on Tuesday" for $200 please, Alex.

From what I understand, they upgraded to a warning too late by then (10am?). Most people already arrived at work.

Then they were showing up very early.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA / 411 AM EST TUE JAN 28 2014

IN MAIN BAND FOR THE AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT... HAVE SNOW/SLEET AMOUNTS OF 1-3 INCLUDING ATL METRO. [...] ALL THESE ACCUMULATION... OTHER THAN THE NW GA LIGHT BAND...WILL MEET WARNING CRITERIA SO HAVE CONTINUED WARNING AND EXPANDED THIS TO ANOTHER TIER OF COUNTIES INCLUDING ATL METRO AREA.

FINAL NOTE...WE REMAIN CONCERNED ABOUT IMPACT WITH ONSET OF PRECIP AROUND RUSH HOUR AND SCHOOL RELEASE. [...]

And that wasn't even the only forecast that predicted doom for Atlanta. The only forecasts which predicted clear weather came from a Ouija board in Nathan Deal's office.

I was just as underwhelmed as you when I heard "coldest temperatures since... 1995!"

That said, last summer was particularly hot:

* Historical Heat Wave Expanding Across the West (June 2013)
* Death Valley Heat Breaks All-Time US June Record
* Heat Wave July 2013
* What’s Behind the Heat Wave

And in December, we did see dramatic weather extremes:

* The temperature in New York's Central Park topped out at 71 degrees on Sunday, breaking a 1998 record of 63 degrees
* The temperature had reached 65 degrees in Central Park on Saturday, breaking a 2011 record of 62 degrees.
* Temperatures in Philadelphia reached a record 68 degrees on Sunday.
* In Washington D.C., the temperature was hovering "about 40 degrees warmer than normal,"
* New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were pummeled by an ice storm
* In Nelson County, Kentucky, three drowning victims were pulled from a submerged vehicle
* A tornado touched down in the city of Redfield, Arkansas
* Widespread damage from the storm system was also reported near Dermott, Arkansas ... "We are thinking it was a tornado,"

Tornadoes in December?

Peak tornado season in the southern states is March through May; in the northern states, it is late spring through early summer.

Just two weeks later, it's a cold snap: Chicago already broke it's record low -- more to follow.

When I woke up this morning to go to work I checked the weather and this is what I saw: -14 F, -38 F Windchill in Chicago and -11 F, -39F Windchill at the South Pole. I don't think I've ever seen temps that low before. The good news is that like the temps, traffic into work was way down.

Next up. Hell freezes over.

As I type this, it's 27 F (-3 C) in Hell. So yes, frozen.

Microsoft goes open source.

First, Microsoft Public License. Second, Microsoft's newly acquired mobile phone division is rumored to be building an Android device for those market segments that aren't quite ready for Windows Phone.

News to me. that particular site is a subdomain of the NOAA, seems to be working fine....

A whole host of sources, some of which include the NWS but, and here's the important bit, not their website.

Really? So stuff like this isn't used by anybody. I assume they get their current conditions on a CD...

There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.

http://ptwc.weather.gov/

Fair enough, but they have not been "fearmongering". Plus it's better to have warnings that don't pan out than no warnings at all.

To quote one of the warnings, for a 7.1 magnitude from Queen Charlottes / Haida Gwai (emphasis added):

TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT NUMBER 1
NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
521 PM HST SAT OCT 27 2012

TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII

SUBJECT - TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT

THIS STATEMENT IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

      ORIGIN TIME - 0504 PM HST 27 OCT 2012
      COORDINATES - 52.9 NORTH 131.9 WEST
      LOCATION - QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION
MAGNITUDE - 7.1 MOMENT

EVALUATION

BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
  NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
  DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
  TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY STATEMENT ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.

There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.

http://ptwc.weather.gov/

"For example, when waking up a on a summer day, wouldn't it be nice to have an app that tells you what beach is sunniest?"

What about that requires the "Internet of Things"? If you wanted to implement that right now, you'd fetch the National Weather Service's XML structured weather data for the points of interest. Given a latitude and longitude, the NWS server will compute their weather model for any desired point in the US on request. For beaches, there are already sites with current surf reports, and the major surf spots have webcams.

There are applications for low-powered devices that talk IPv6, but this isn't one of them. Most of the useful applications are industrial.

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.89640&lon=-93.61164939999998&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=dwml an XML link as an example.

You can get it as KML as well whatever that is.

National Weather Service says it was 66 to 64 F.

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

Note the link, near the upper left, to the standard version. It's a gif:
http://radar.weather.gov/lite/NCR/BOX_loop.gif

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

Note the link, near the upper left, to the standard version. It's a gif:
http://radar.weather.gov/lite/NCR/BOX_loop.gif

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

Note the link, near the upper left, to the standard version. It's a gif:
http://radar.weather.gov/lite/NCR/BOX_loop.gif

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

Note the link, near the upper left, to the standard version. It's a gif:
http://radar.weather.gov/lite/NCR/BOX_loop.gif

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

That's only the national ones. If you use a local one, and make it animate, they use Flash. For example, the Boston area radar loop.

Which is actually a step up - they used to be a Java applet. The Flash version is a massive improvement. Of course, there's no reason why they couldn't be done using HTML4 (no need anything HTML5 adds), but they're not.

Also . . . I can get EVERYTHING via my iPhone, as long as it doesn't use flash.

Guess what the National Weather Service's radar loops use.

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

Also . . . I can get EVERYTHING via my iPhone, as long as it doesn't use flash.

Guess what the National Weather Service's radar loops use.

From the looks of things, they're nothing but animated GIFs.

The USGS is like a million times better.
    Here's the link: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0002ksa.php
and here's the Tsunami info:
    http://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id=pacific.2011.04.07.143955

The "point" forecasts on the National Weather Service website are created by a robot off digital - gridded - data. Here A little clunky at times, but there are forecasts for either 5x5km or 2.5x-2.5km grids across the US, more than a million forecast areas updated anywhere from hourly to a few times a day. The human forecasters create the gridded data, so they focus on the data, not the words.

Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity

No. The average return self-publishing is probably significantly greater than spending your life trying get to signed to an RIAA company. An internet web site has global reach, unlike radio stations. And even after signing the odds are pretty grim.

To be a "serious" pop star is a million to one event with a world population of billions and a few hundred "serious" pop stars. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

And that's ignoring RIAA company creative accounting that drastically lowers the financial return to the artist.

The odds of becoming big are tiny whatever road an artist decides to take.

---

Who owns the copy?

Yeah, but the Internet can completely replace the local news stations. Come on, you must have seen a promo for a news story only to look up the story on Google News, getting the details immediately rather than waiting until 11. I know I have.

Local weather is easier to get via the Internet. Weather.gov is both free and more targeted than the local TV weather report. Live sports games can't really be done on the Internet yet, but then again, there are cable channels that fill that niche.

But I do kind of like the local news channels. Who else will keep fuckin' that chicken?

WTF? The stats you provide show the exact opposite of what you claim. Construction deaths in a workzone is akin to being struck by lightning. Literally. Murder accounts for some 306 times as many deaths. Driving account for some 670 times as many deaths.

844 deaths in a 7 year period. 120.5 deaths a year.

No more than half of those are caused by cars. 60.25

At most, likely less due to mobile equipment, 61 people a year die in work zones from cars. Nationwide.

That's one person a state per year. That's no where near dangerous. Here are some comparison numbers. http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats.shtml http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf

Deaths per year:
Car Accidents ~40,000
Murder: 18,573
Hurricane 116
Heat 114
Flood 64
Worker struck by Car in Workzone 61
Lightning 59
Tornado 56

Going grocery shopping is more dangerous than construction in a work zone.

Even White Sands looks iffy. Guess it'll be another day or so before deorbit. Disappointing, but nothing new.