Weather Data Available in XML

wombatmobile writes "Wired reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week began providing weather data in an open access XML format. Previously, the data was technically available to the public, but in a format that's not easily deciphered. How will the free and easy availability of valuable data like this in XML affect the development of the web? One example is Tom Groves SVG weather. This type of visualization of XML data is about to fall within easy reach with nothing more than a text editor required as an authoring tool. From March 2005 SVG becomes part of the standard Mozilla/FireFox build. As an example of how web standards are supposed to work, what more could you hope to find?" We mentioned the policy change a few days ago.

Comments

If it crashes....

[stfvon007]

Do we get the blue sky of death?

Why SOAP

[bigberk]

Can't the XML files just be fetched by HTTP ? Why introduce that SOAP layer? I mean, can't I just wget .../BOS.xml or something?

Re:Why SOAP

[aluminum boy]

SOAP, being XML, is available via http. Anything available in SOAP can be opened / viewed as XML in most browsers.

Re:Why SOAP

[jdludlow]

SOAP uses HTTP as a transport layer option (usually). The reason why the added complexity is worth it is because it allows client applications to do things like "float temp = weatherSerivce.getTemp(cityID);" much more easily. (Note: I completely made up that example, but it's similar to what would actually be used.) The point is that the client doesn't really have to know and/or care that "weatherService" isn't a local call. The client also doesn't need to care that it's running Java locally and the server is running .NET (or whatever else it might be using).

SOAP is just a piece of the larger and much more complicated Web Services unbrella. Understanding all of the specs involved is a huge task, but you can do some client-side tutorials that will explain quite a bit of the basics anyway. Most of the real work is done on the server, so if you ignore that bit of it to start with, the learning curve isn't anywhere near as steep. The Apache Axis project is a decent starting point, if you just want to play around with the technology. Installing Axis into Tomcat is about a minutes worth of effort, then you can spend hours exploring the various documents, examples, and tutorials.

Re:Why SOAP

[batkiwi]

Because it's meant to be used by programs that do processing on the data, not simply aggregators.

By using SOAP, I can use php/java/c++ and simply bind to their services isntead of having to roll my own weather-xml->object (or hashtable, or whatever) converter.

This is not for you to just hit with your browser/wget/whatever to stick weather on your webpage (although you can do that, it's easy if you post the right data), it's to allow you to write your own application that does whatever it wants with the data in an easy manner.

It's not flat xml files based on city as per your example because that wouldn't make any sense. If you read through their api's there's a lot of data you can get based on long/lat or weather station id or........

The question is.....

[BorisSkratchunkov]

weather or not I'll use it.....

I'm sorry, I'm sorry....it's another bad pun....I seriously need to talk to a psychologist about my BPS (Bad Pun Syndrome or Backup Power Supply, which ever you prefer).

Re:The question is.....

[daeley]

I hate to rain on your parade, but your attempts to cloud the issues takes a hail of a lot of guts. What are you, three sleets to the wind? It snow wonder you're sorry!

Re:What's my lat and alt?

[bigberk]

The XML requires latitude and altitude...

OK, you're going to need: (1) a compass, (2) a stopwatch with a second hand, and (3) an astrolabe.

...or just look it up in a reference book

Re:What's my lat and alt?

[ewithrow]

http://www.zipinfo.com/search/zipcode.htm

Re:What's my lat and alt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Click on a city in your area on this site: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/custom.html? continent=namerica The page for each city lists the coordinates.

Extension for Firefox

[FiReaNGeL]

Don't miss out the wonderful WeatherFox extension for Firefox... crafteh coded this marvel after a suggestion of mine on Mozillazine Forums. International Forecast in your statusbar. Can't beat that!

Re:Extension for Firefox

[MP3Chuck]

Except that now it's ForecastFox. Apparently there was some conflict with the website www.weatherfox.com (people going to weatherfox.com looking for WeatherFox extension support 'n stuff).

NOAA?

[MP3Chuck]

Finally, a *AA action we can be happy about!

Re:What's my lat and alt?

[Davak]

Yeah, you are right... that's the only information I need to chunk out a quick program running off the feed.

Speaking of the feed...here's the URL that contains the actual XML information:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/forecasts/xml/

I guess they didn't post it on the front page to decrease the slash effect.

Next step, better forecasting

[Eric Giguere]

It'll be easier to parse, but it won't be any more accurate.

Eric

Re:Next step, better forecasting

[LiquidCoooled]

The NOAA today started releasing accurate targeted weather data in XML format to a wide audience.
However unfortunately, because of a large slashdotting, you cannot get todays weather until tomorrow.
Several planned hurricanes were put on hold for a few days because of the disruption.
Impatient internet users were caught and fined for illegally downloading and sharing todays weather. One user had a large tornado and numerous thunderstorms on his server.

Meanwhile, other governments still charge..

[mumblestheclown]

Meanwhile, other, shortsighted governments, including most European ones, still largely charge for basic weather information.

This leads to two perverse situations:

1. (small aircraft) Pilots and (small craft) boaters are put in the unfortunate place of balancing their personal safety against a few dollars in such a way that would never be tolerated if we were talking about automobiles and trains.
2. often, european users of weather data rely on US-taxpayer funded US weather info for their own countries. of course, since the emphasis is not so much, this info and forecasts are not as detailed or thought through as those that their own governments (or hastily privatized equivalents) produce daily. It's one thing that the US is doing right.

Re:Meanwhile, other governments still charge..

[lukewarmfusion]

NOAA servers contain much more weather info than just US states and territories; my program was pulling down everything from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Which was good for me - the site was designed for world travelers.

To make it "work" in Firefox...

[b00m3rang]

Follow these directions: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/windows1.html

So far all it's managed to do is make Firefox use 100% CPU, and not much else. Let me know if you have better luck.

IE just crashes.

Weather Market

[Doc Ruby]

I want to see independent organizations datamining the NOAA weather data, running their own models, and making competing predictions. Then I want to see metaminers generating comparative "batting averages", keyed to current conditions, and get my weather forecasts from a client which knows which service is better at predicting the next few days/weeks/months starting with current conditions. That will give weather stenographers like the Weather Channel, and their TV news echo chamber, a real run for their money. Forecast@Home, anyone?

URL for HTTP-fetchable XML

[ErichTheWebGuy]

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

The URL points to the RSS versions of the XML feeds. These have actually been available for quite some time.

Re:SVG plugin for firefox?

[g_braad]

You need to recompile Firefox yourself or download the older 0.8 release from Mozilla.org which has SVG enabled.

http://mozilla.org/projects/svg/

another solution is to install svgview from adobe, like the 6.0 beta 1 and coppy the plugin files found in /progra~1/common files/adobe/adobe viewer 6/plugins/np* to the plugins dir from firefox (ofcourse only on windows).

if you want to use the mozilla implementation of SVG, recompile is the only solution for now. is there someone out there who would be willing to create this so-called 'patch'?

weather.com been doing this for a while

[Fishstick]

I set up a little script a long time ago to get weather data from an XML feed from the weather channel for our office webcam. It's free and was really easy to use...

http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
require LWP::UserAgent;
use XML::DOM;
use CGI qw(:standard);
# first, get the XML feed
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(env_proxy => 1, keep_alive => 1, timeout => 30);
my $base_url="http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/6 0143?cc=*&prod=xoap";
my $par="&par=[removed]";
my $key="&key=[sign up to get one]";
$response = $ua->get("$base_url$par$key");
die "Error while getting ", $response->request->uri,
" -- ", $response->status_line, "\nAborting"
unless $response->is_success;
my %weather = %$response;
# then, parse out the crap we want
my $parser = XML::DOM::Parser->new();
foreach(keys %weather){
$xmldoc = $parser->parse($weather{$_}) if(/content/);
}
foreach my $cur_cond ($xmldoc->getElementsByTagName('cc')){
$curr_cond{'lastup'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('lsup')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'obsvst'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('obst')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'temp'} = cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('tmp')->item(0)->
&nb s p; getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'chill'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('flik')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'text'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('t')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'icon'} = cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('icon')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
}
print header;
print start_html("nice little cgi page to display the time/weather");
print <<EOF;
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p >
<p><font size="-1">WebCam is located on 9th floor in Itasca<br />
pointed out southeast window overlooking Thorndale</font></p>
<form name="clock" onSubmit="0">
<input type="button" name="face" size=13 value="">
</form>
EOF
print end_html;

sorry about the atrocious formating - slashcode made me take out whitespace (what is the fricking point of an ecode tag supported if you can't post a small snippet like this without removing all the whitespace!?)

Re:What's my lat and alt?

[orangenormal]

You can also get XML feeds from specific weather stations at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/ (Not lat and long required; just the station name) Now to wait until the Canadian government does the same thing...