Slashdot Mirror

The weather at Edwards for the following three days is only a little better. Its either Edwards on Monday, or Canaveral on Tuesday.

The weather looks a bit grim for a KSC landing.

What major deficiency is there in the Safari browser?

Try viewing large animated gifs like the weather radar on http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/index_loop.php I can grab the image on a server, split it into parts, and have javascript show me each image, but somehow, an animated gif larger than 2MB is blocked by safari.

Also, lightning killed 33 people last year, which is lower than normal (40 http://www.weather.gov/os/lightning/fatalities.htm, http://weather.about.com/od/thunderstormsandlightning/f/lightningdeaths.htm). Since 1994, 489 people have died due to lightning strike.

187 passengers died in 2001 in the 9/11 attacks (excluding terrorists), without counting the buildings, Pentagon, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks).

We have lost more people to terrorism than lightning strikes by a long ways.

Side note: being hit by lightning is unusually common from here in Florida, ranking in at a whopping FIFTY (www.dep.state.fl.us/cmp/events/files/paxton.ppt), which is better than your state lottery odds. However, most people live through the strike (5 deaths). Investing in lightning rods is foolish, because when it comes right down to it, not very many people die that way.

Illinois Too

I thought it was funny too, but we're getting our first snow of the season today.

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=buf&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no Perfect example, if you look at the National Weather Service radar for Buffalo, southeast of the "o" in Buffalo you'll see an orange strip, there are about 100 windmills on hills about 25-30 miles from the airport weather station reflecting the Doppler back.

For free NOAA/National Weather Service forecasts for your ZIP code (USA only) go to weather.gov , input your city and state.

Then, at that next page, input your ZIP code.

Save the URL of the resulting page with the forecast for your ZIP code.

This will make EX-Senator Santorum weep bitter, bitter tears.

And you'll get, essentially, the same forecast you'd get from the local media. After all, the NWS is where they get their weather info from.

Finally, solid evidence that the government controls the weather.

Well, duh!

And in other news: Hell is still hot.

As I type this, Hell, Michigan is 68 deg F (20 deg C). What's "hot" to you?

XML is available. See http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/xml/ I while back I threw together a quick n dirty script that queries the NDFD every few hours and drives an LED weatherball in front of my house. Keeps me from having to remember to check a weather report every night :-) If you back up to the main page, there are even links to view the forecast models themselves.

They lost, and they lost rather completely.

Here's a starting point for exploring some of this data. There's probably more places where this data is available from the NWS in very open formats, and I believe more is to come.

http://www.weather.gov/rss/

You know, that's exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks for that.

They lost, and they lost rather completely.

Here's a starting point for exploring some of this data. There's probably more places where this data is available from the NWS in very open formats, and I believe more is to come.

http://www.weather.gov/rss/

And what is "maximize" good for.

You've never done image editing, programming, websurfing, watching video, or maybe just wanted to maximize a system status window fullscreen?

You've never used a Mac, I take it.

The Mac OS has a zoom button, marked with a + icon, next to the close and minimize buttons. It's normally green (unless you turn the colors off.)

This button serves to resize the window to fit its contents, up to the limit of the physical screen size. Often, this does actually fill the screen (whenever the window's contents are as large as, or larger than, the physical screen's resolution.) At other times, it will maximize only in one direction (usually vertically, as with a long text document or web page.)

A good portion of the time, though, it just makes the window large enough to show the contents without scroll bars.

So if you're doing (as you said) image editing, and the image you're editing is a low-res 640x480 image, it will NOT fill the screen. The window will jump to exactly 640x480 pixels (plus space for the title bar, toolbars, and other adornments.) Unless you're zoomed in at, say, 2x resolution, in which case it would size itself to 1280x960, and so on, until you run out of pixels on your monitor.

This is incredibly useful when you have a big widescreen monitor (the kind Apple loves to sell and tends to bundle) Most web pages, for example, are designed (poorly) to fill a 1024-pixel-wide screen, and they end up with a lot of empty white space off to the right when maximized on a widescreen display.

On the other hand, some applications on the Mac make their own rules. iTunes, for example. But that's a problem with the implementation (Apple's, in this case) not with the concept, which normally works pretty well.

Here's a website I like to have fullscreen regularly (warning, it's a biiig animated gif): http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

And as you would expect, the Zoom button in Safari resizes the window to the limit of the scren, minus the menu bar (and Dock if shown.) That page looks great on a widescreen display, by the way.

On the other hand, here's a website that looks awful when maximized on a widescren display:
http://www.cnn.com/

Safari on a Mac, if you let it do its thing, will zoom the page vertically, but leave half of your horizontal space available for other things.

When the Mac came out, every software user's manual had to explain how to use a mouse.

And up through OS 8,9,X people have had to explain how to use one button mice with ctrl-click, open-apple-click, ctrl-open-close-apple-x-double-click

And what is "maximize" good for.

You've never done image editing, programming, websurfing, watching video, or maybe just wanted to maximize a system status window fullscreen? Here's a website I like to have fullscreen regularly (warning, it's a biiig animated gif): http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

For the scientific community, not so much.

I need something useful for the scientific community when deciding what to wear today?

For regular humans, maybe.

I think you just proved my point.

Popups are why I hesitate to go to weather.com

If you're in the US, use weather.gov It's where weather.com and local broadcasters get their weather data from anyway.

No, they don't. Weather.com, the web presence of "The Weather Channel", has their own forecasters, and they're seldom as accurate as the NOAA. But at least they're not as bad as AccuWeather.com, which is one of the companies that sells forecasts to local TV stations.

weather.gov may not be a pretty site, but it rocks in terms of usability and accuracy of the data. And I already paid for it from my taxes!

Why is it people believe just because somebody doesn't receive weather information over the TV that their lives are at risk and that the government is going to be sued. If anybody is truly serious about staying on top of weather information they would have a weather radio and listen to the National Weather Service at critical times operated by NOAA. There are even radios that can be bought cheaply that automatically turn on whenever severe weather is going on in your county or area.

In my experience of NOAA weather radios they are far more reliable because with all weather radios I've seen so far operate off of batteries which will allow the radio to continue to operate with or without power to the home compared to that of TVs where well: no power, no TV, no weather information.

I have read a few articles that give the impression that once analog broadcasts are turned off then the digital broadcasts will be allowed to boost their power output, but by how much I have no idea. Hopefully this is true because some stations broadcasting in the same county as on the receiving end is just terribly difficult to pickup. The worst so far is WTVF (CBS) here in Nashville, Tennessee that I have noticed.

It doesn't have as nice an interface, but if you're switching in support of NOAA you may as get it from them directly, at weather.gov. (I generally use Weather Underground, which is pretty good, though last I checked they have a lot of ads if you don't block them)

The National Weather Service has a data downlink on AMC4 with about 6mbit/sec of weather data...NEXRAD radar data, satellite imagery, surface observations, and more. Requires a C-band dish, an LNB (about $35 for a decent one), and PCI DVB-S card ($50ish on eBay).
Search for NOAAport.

Ingest software: http://www.noaaport.net/
One year with NOAAport: http://www.geo-web.org.uk/noaaport.pdf
Receiving with a PCI DVB-S card: http://www.hwic.net/projects/weather/noaaport/twinhan_1020/

Hot! (NWS)
(Okay, it's a rather contrived example.)

Hey, I feel for you. Back in `93 (I think, don't quote me), we had an ice storm hit our area pretty hard. Some people were without power for over 2 weeks. And the cell phones were useless after the first couple of hours when the batteries at the towers went dead. Only the police, fire and utilities had any radio communications at the time because they had planned their systems for just this type of emergency.

Oh, some cell sites had generators, but the cell co.'s had assumed they could just grab a gas can at the local hardware store and buy some gas to refill the generators until the utility hooked them back up.

Which would have been fine if the utility didn't have 100K other customers who also needed to be hooked back up. Not to mention that the utility couldn't even get power to their own substations because of all the downed trees and lines. Heck, most roads were impassable because of downed limbs.

And none of the stores in the area that sold gas cans could take checks or credit cards because they didn't have power, cash sales only! And most banks and ATMs were offline as well. As were all the gas stations within a 100 mile radius. It was a mess. Widespread power outages are a bitch. I was fortunate as my power was only out for about 10 hours. We dug out the candles and my kerosene garage heater for the duration.

A co-worker drove 4 hours round-trip to his father-in-law's place just to borrow a generator. When he got home he discovered there wasn't a gas can to be bought nor a gas station open to sell him gas. His borrowed generator was useless. We still give him a hard time at work about that one. There were even some fist fights at the few places that had generators for sale and a couple of stores were gouging people heavily to buy them. Hard times seem to bring out the worst in some people.

Last spring after a storm I was without power for over half a day. I went out and bought a generator the next day but have never had to use it.

Hmm, just checked the weather service at http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php. Looks like that storm might make it this far after all. I think I'll go fill up both my 5 gallon gas cans.

Good luck to everyone in the storm's path! Hope it doesn't hit you!

Seriously, name me one "house-hold" name website that uses Java applets anyway.

Well, it makes perfect sense to narrow it down to "house-hold" name websites because that is all that matters.

(Ir)regardless, here is a little mom & pop site that uses it, the National Weather Service.

According to an (unofficial) post by Kimbal Musk in 2005, "The highest winds we want to launch in is 24 knots [~27.6 mph]." I don't know if that's still there policy, but current wind speed is just around 15 mph.

outlook != forecast.

Here is the US's weather.gov Climate Prediction page:
http://www.weather.gov/predictions.php

Interesting feature. Al Roker would be proud.

If it's anything more than a glorifed version of the Weather Channel webpage (and closer to the real weather webpage, complete with other departments), I'll be impressed and probably use it. Otherwise it's probably just a feature I won't use.

Sounds like NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Established infrastructure, works, and isn't that expensive for the end user. But that is the rub -- people have to buy a compatible radio. If there were any kind of demand, that could be cheaply added to clock radios, TVs, etc.

Here is the link to the radar image for Melbourne, Florida

I'm close enough to see the space shots, and there were some storms west of the Cape this afternoon, a few more out to sea. Forecast for tomorrow is less of a chance of thunderstorms in the area and downrange.

I have my thermos of coffee ready. "I always have coffee when I view radar". (Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.)

Perception is reality...

You perceive what you say to be the absolute truth, but it is your perception .

A breakdown from another perspective ...

we were able to pay our employees 3 to 4 times what they would make at a decent job.

And for that, they would work 6 or 7 days a week, sometimes over 12 hrs.

My take on this is, they see the high pay as the incentive, and know that if they do
not work above and beyond the call of duty they will be canned as there are many ppl
that would like to be paid enough to fix all their financial problems and those
of their families they care dearly about .

I havent seen such a good work ethic in any other IT department and I dont think my wife has either

I don't know how many IT companies you have worked for, but for one thing, they have similarities
and differences, they are not apples and apples .

Some IT companies are very professional, and some are chaotic maelstroms of disaster, I have
worked for those two kinds and some in between .

As a business owner you may have many years of experience with many different companies
before you started your own business, but I am going to guess you have been at this only
since the internet came to fruition in the EU, ie. roughly 10 years or less .

Your making a blanket statement about US coders, scroll over to the SE portion of the US
of this inter-linked high resolution multi-radar 3d OpenGL radar display .

You cannot view the 3D ability of it via the web, only the NOAA and NSSL ppl can via
their OpenGL terminals with the special display system the lets them peel away layers
of the clouds by wind speed or moisture content .

http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

To me this shows that some heavy coding is going on even in places as lax as the .GOV .

I think the biggest issue is how lax one becomes when politics achieves what abilities need not.

I think a lot of ppl in the US are busy doing coding that gets them paid well, so they
can go home to their families, and call it a day .

Mental Mind Games are great, but it is not what keeps the USA moving forward .

Once someone said necessity is the mother of invention, and it is that mindset that seems
to work well here, check our results to verify our abilities .

I feel in Europe due to the large numbers of ppl struggling to make a better life for
themselves they have to get noticed any and every way possible .

Here you just post your resume' on the major search engines, and you get sick of the phone ringing
if your fairly adept .

It is not that we cannot enter these contests of the mind, it is that over 96% of the US is employed,
and a fair portion of those either have multiple jobs, work overtime, or long hours on salary
or are futhering their education while working in hopes of promotion .

Online schools, night classes, and vo-techs number in the hundreds nation wide as ppl work longer
hours and do school/training to get that next promotion or a better job .

This is also why it doesnt surprise me that you see so many 'rogue' programmers with nefarious intents in these countries either.

Giving the option of no job, and working menial labor these ppl use their talents to make money
anyway they can . I do not condone it, but when some one is faced with hardship for them and
their family, they will chose their family 9 times out of 10 . Many of these ppl live in countries
where their government was or is horribly corrupt, and if you are a fan of Darwin then you
know the phrase "products of their environment"

Ex-MislTech

For a very good paper on lightning protection: http://www.weather.gov/directives/sym/pd03041006cu rr.pdf It's a National Weather Service Manual on lightning protection for sites that need serious protection. It has lots of ideas for bonding, ground improvement and surge protection.

We're agreeing! I'm going to www.accuweather.com to check a temperature. Do you have the ZIP Code for Hell?

There was a time when you could have gone to NOAA to check that temperature. Did Rick Santourm finally get this way?

Disclaimer: May not want to follow that link at the office ;)

Should have included the URL for the site :
weather.gov

If you want to build it into your Web site: the National Weather Service has a per state RSS feed containing weather alerts. The URL is:

        http://www.weather.gov/alerts/.rss

Where is a two letter state abbreviation. If you just want to let users access (quickly) weather reports via browser; I highly recommend the 'ForecastFox' extension to Firefox.

NWS has been allowed to do more under new policy issued by NOAA last December. However, under pressure, NOAA is now proposing slight changes to the policy. NOAA is accepting comments until Nov 1.
Just what this change means is difficult to understand since it depends on how you define NOAA's mission, or how the Dept of Commerce and NOAA leadership at the time of any specific issues define the misssion.
Information Week had a very nice article the other week that explained the issues.

NWS has been allowed to do more under new policy issued by NOAA last December. However, under pressure, NOAA is now proposing slight changes to the policy. NOAA is accepting comments until Nov 1.
Just what this change means is difficult to understand since it depends on how you define NOAA's mission, or how the Dept of Commerce and NOAA leadership at the time of any specific issues define the misssion.
Information Week had a very nice article the other week that explained the issues.

The parent alludes to it, but basically private weather companies (many in PA) are trying to shut off government competetion. Because weather.gov is so good and ad free, people prefer to use it. The privates have reacted by making there sites cleaner, but its still not as good. To stop government form releasing weather data the companies are pushing a bill in the senate sponsored by rep santorum (google news search for accuweather and santorum
one story:
this is one of many stories about this.

Basically because our tax dollars pay for the weather service we should be able to get this information. Interesting to note the in the UK the BBC is running into similar problems (its government sponsored as well)

It even gives you a radar image. Works well in bars and cars especially.

http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/

a lot of people who won't be able to find out even basic weather forecasts because ATSC just plain sucks in anything remotely approaching fringe reception areas.

I can pick up the weather forecast in my car using FM or AM radio. There's also NOAA Weather Radio. We don't need new FCC rules.

IF the government isn't backing down from this fight, then they should make sure that they do the same in the fight against the National Weather Service Same idea of private vs. public work.

For those who actually want to use the xml service while it's around, here's the link.

Should we shutdown the wonderful NOAA Weather Radio system also? After all, the competes directly with all those commericial radio stations out there. (Never mind that we get alerts in the event of severe weather.)

In response to:

Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.

Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said:

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time. You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."
And then this gem from Accuweather:

Myers argued that nearly all consumers get their weather information for free through commercial providers, including the news media, so there's little reason for the federal agency to duplicate their efforts.

"Do you really need that from the NOAA Web site?" he asked.

Um, gee, if everyone already doesn't get their weather information from the National Weather Service, then what the fuck are they so worried about? Incidentally, the stated mission of the National Weather Service is:

The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.

Clear, timely, comprehensive, accurate - and now open - weather forecasts are critical for many, many sectors of public and private society. The new, open formats of weather data also make its integration into myriad other services and tools trivial. It's only good for the public. I don't think Sen. Santorum realizes how critical the NWS's weather, climate, and marine data is to so many sectors of US society.

The National Weather Service is funded for this mission, among others, by the taxpayers of the United States.

I hope Rick Santorum realizes that in a world where this bill passes, there should also be a corresponding reduction of funding to the NWS, in addition to a wholesale change of its mission. In fact, what would its mission be?

The best part of all of this is that in order for the NWS to effectively be able to gather the necessary data to still predict and warn against life- and property-threatening dangers, it still has to do almost all of the continuing data collection it does now. Removing the public access to this does absolutely nothing for anyone.

Except for-profit weather forecasting providers like Accuweather, of course.

For now, at least, Johnson of the NWS notes his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.

Remember, too, that a "bill" is just that. Time to remind your elected officials of what you think...

In response to:

Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.

Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said:

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time. You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."
And then this gem from Accuweather:

Myers argued that nearly all consumers get their weather information for free through commercial providers, including the news media, so there's little reason for the federal agency to duplicate their efforts.

"Do you really need that from the NOAA Web site?" he asked.

Um, gee, if everyone already doesn't get their weather information from the National Weather Service, then what the fuck are they so worried about? Incidentally, the stated mission of the National Weather Service is:

The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.

Clear, timely, comprehensive, accurate - and now open - weather forecasts are critical for many, many sectors of public and private society. The new, open formats of weather data also make its integration into myriad other services and tools trivial. It's only good for the public. I don't think Sen. Santorum realizes how critical the NWS's weather, climate, and marine data is to so many sectors of US society.

The National Weather Service is funded for this mission, among others, by the taxpayers of the United States.

I hope Rick Santorum realizes that in a world where this bill passes, there should also be a corresponding reduction of funding to the NWS, in addition to a wholesale change of its mission. In fact, what would its mission be?

The best part of all of this is that in order for the NWS to effectively be able to gather the necessary data to still predict and warn against life- and property-threatening dangers, it still has to do almost all of the continuing data collection it does now. Removing the public access to this does absolutely nothing for anyone.

Except for-profit weather forecasting providers like Accuweather, of course.

For now, at least, Johnson of the NWS notes his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.

Remember, too, that a "bill" is just that. Time to remind your elected officials of what you think...

Salling Clicker

BTW, howdy from up north. Don't look south cause rain is heading your way.

try this out, goto the NOAA aviation website and do a TAF (terminal area forecast) aka the local weather. You'll have to put in an airport so try KPMD (Palmdale airport, Palmdale CA) You have two options raw data or translated

Here are the two so you can see the difference.

KPMD 241130Z 241212 23008KT P6SM SKC
FM1500 VRB03KT P6SM SCT200
FM0100 24008KT P6SM BKN100

and translated

Forecast for: KPMD
Text: KPMD 241130Z 241212 23008KT P6SM SKC
Forecast period: 1200 to 1500 UTC 24 January 2005
Forecast type: FROM: standard forecast or significant change
Winds: from the SW (230 degrees) at 9 MPH (8 knots; 4.2 m/s)
Visibility: 6 miles (10 km)
Clouds: clear skies
Weather: no significant weather forecast for this period
Text: FM1500 VRB03KT P6SM SCT200
Forecast period: 1500 UTC 24 January 2005 to 0100 UTC 25 January 2005
Forecast type: FROM: standard forecast or significant change
Winds: variable direction winds at 3 MPH (3 knots; 1.6 m/s)
Visibility: 6 miles (10 km)
Clouds: scattered clouds at 20000 feet AGL
Weather: no significant weather forecast for this period
Text: FM0100 24008KT P6SM BKN100
Forecast period: 0100 to 1200 UTC 25 January 2005
Forecast type: FROM: standard forecast or significant change
Winds: from the WSW (240 degrees) at 9 MPH (8 knots; 4.2 m/s)
Visibility: 6 miles (10 km)
Ceiling: 10000 feet AGL
Clouds: broken clouds at 10000 feet AGL
Weather: no significant weather forecast for this period

The whole point for the coding was for bandwidth since this info use to be sent out by teletype, which by the way is the same information the weather stations use to provide the weather. The only ones that provide better local coveral are the ones that have their own weather radar, but they are far and few between.

You can goto http://www.weather.gov/ to see what they are screaming about it's even simpler than the aviation site.

The cost out of pocket to the tax payers a year is about $3 each and it might cost an extra nickle to provide the automated websites. Money well spent in my book.

http://weather.gov/data/current_obs/

Watch/warnings in xml are at:

http://weather.gov/alerts/

http://weather.gov/data/current_obs/

Watch/warnings in xml are at:

http://weather.gov/alerts/

That used to be correct. You, Private Citizen, have always been free to collect the raw data from the NOAA. The policy the commercial weather firms arranged with the NOAA fourteen years ago was a statement that the NOAA wouldn't compete with the commercial firms, in terms of providing "finished" content.

I think the "competition" you were asking about occurred in 2003 when the NOAA started experimenting with making "point forecasts" available to the public: the weather firms cried foul. The NOAA decided to revisit their policy last year, and they requested public comment. The public outcry was loud and clear: if the NOAA was processing data at public expense, the NOAA was expected to make the processed data available to the public. And, surprisingly enough, it became their new policy despite complaints from the commercial firms. It's called the "Fair Weather Policy".

So, the point forecasts are now available on-line. How has that changed things? Not much. People still turn to the local TV station for weather in the morning, and they tune in to The Weather Channel if they're heading to the beach or the mountains.

I think where the main effect has been felt is in the industrial sector. For example, concrete companies typically rely on a very precise two hour forecast to ensure their new sidewalks won't get rained on. They used to pay lots of money to private meterologists who "insured" their forecasts (for $499.00 we'll guarantee you'll see no rain in the next two hours or we pay you $10,000.) But with NOAA point forecasts available, as a concrete company I'd be likely to take my own chances regarding rain.