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Weather Service Becoming More Tech Friendly
awgy writes "The National Weather Service recently began offering XML/RSS feeds of their
alerts,
observations, and
forecasts. Now the Tulsa, OK
Forecast Office is experimenting with
offering forecast files
for Google Earth. It looks like the
National Weather Service is quickly becoming one of the most geek-friendly
government agencies."
I look forward to the creative uses that are sure to come from this...
Now, if they could just offer real time radar feeds, I'd be happy.
Jerry
Don't forget everyone, this is the same weather service our friends at Accuweather and like minded companys are trying to get to stop their innovation.
I pay for them to gather the weather, why should I have to pay accuweather to give it to me in a more readable format.
I'll let the guys/girls that gathered it in the first place make it purdy!
Error: Sig not found.
It even gives you a radar image. Works well in bars and cars especially.
http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/
I was under the impression that most of us never go outside. Why the hell would we need to know what the weather's like? ;-)
Mood: Sunny.
Can't wait until the fall harvest season arrives; all this grain makes me feel hot and a trim will be great!
I hate those new sat photos they released yesterday. They make me look fat.
I wonder what Mars is doing. We were, like, so totally close during perihelion, but then he drifted away. Men.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This was long before XML, so they invented their own format called METAR, no more difficult than, say, email. It was standard, and they have made it public for decades.
"Becoming one of the most geek-friendly government agencies"? They always have been!
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Script for weatherbug data... http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/45726.html
It looks like there are RSS feeds for alerts and current conditions, but not for forecasts. Instead, the forecasts use an NWS-developed XML format. You'd need to write your own parser for this, or find somebody else's.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Besides, don't they just get their data from the gov't and process it?
Basically yes, which is why they have been lobbying so hard recently to get the national weather service to stop giving out all this user friendly data. It hurts their business model.
Finkployd
My father worked for the NWS (retired now). The whole department is nothing but geeks. I had to go to his office after school every day. I learned BASIC on a mainframe ("here this'll keep you busy."). I got to use some touch-screen computer that was networked with a bunch of computers at a Michigan college (I don't think it used Arpanet but it may have). I played a graphical MUD type thing that looked like Wizardry eventually would but I could interact with other players. It pretty much rocked.
Recently a Senator (Rick Santorum, R-PA )introduced a bill prohibiting federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. Now we can get this information for free. When this kind of bill gets passed we need to pay to get weather information.
Let's not forget about Santorum's bill that would basically force the NWS to remove all of these advancements so that the paid weather services can make a profit. The taxpayers have already paid for the collection and processing of weather information and his bill would make the availability of the paid-for information in question. Don't just take my word for it, read this. Or, just google on "santorum weather bill".
Indeed. They appear to have successfully Bought my senator
What's a sig?
I'm still waiting for hurricane overlays for google earth. That would really be neat.
/ 229555.html
Didn't I hear something just recently though about the national weather service trying to cut off access to the free information because they said there were enough free or advertizing subsidized services out here already? ahh yes heres some information on it http://www.livejournal.com/community/weathernerds
The bill can be read here
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
It is probably the only US government agency that I would ever consider working for.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
It looks like the National Weather Service is quickly becoming one of the most geek-friendly government agencies.
That's because they are geeks.
It is the Army Surplus store business model. Buy things for pennies on the dollar from the US gov't, and then sell it back at a big profit to the people whose taxes paid for the items in the first place.
For those of us who have jobs and don't depend on the gov't for food stamps and welfare, services like the Weather Service and Postal Service are the face of government for many. Not only would packaging the Weather Service data be a better service to the taxpayers who fund it, it would also give one of the faces of gov't a more positive look.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
A couple of weeks ago I attended a SkyWarn class and noticed that the NOAA trainer was using FireFox on their NOAA issued laptop.
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)
The EFF is also asking for help on this one.
*sigh* I can't wait for election day!
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
http://www.mopoke.co.uk/weather/
Scraping of BBC Weather, but it works!
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
Actually I developed a love/hate relationship with the Firefox weather extension.
You see, it took priorty and stopped me from navigating web pages, etc. So I uninstalled it.
Agreed. This is covered by FOIA and any law that would restrict this would contradict FOIA rules. I may be wrong, but I think even Top Secret military information is eventually released to the public when it's no longer a risk to our security or our troops which could be 10 years....20 years...40 years or forever...like atomic bomb designs that are 40-50 years old are likely still Top Secret.
Weather information is too important to have to pay for it. Accuweather before the internet was the only way TV stations who did not hire meteorologists could do the weather. In fact, I remember a time ago where the local station just paid for the Accuweather folks to record the forecast. Now they may still pay for the weather but it's usually read by a jock or a paid meteorologist. I wonder what the meteorologists who work for Accuweather think about their own companies stance?? In any case, I am ALL FOR RSS feeds for weaher warnings. It's a excellent way to dissemenate the information. I just hope they have a big enough pipe and let us hit it every 5 minutes or less. Of course that little file isn't much, but when half the web is hitting the feed, bandwidth could get a little out of hand.
Gorkman
Here's what I told him. Here's where I told it to him.
I'm opposed to your introduction of S.786, the "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005." Why don't you just label it the "AccuWeather Protection Act of 2005" and get it over with?
The National Weather Service provides accurate, up to date gathering of data and presents forecasts of weather at taxpayers' expense. To prohibit them from disseminating this through public access, and constrain them to "data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers" (Section 2(c)(2)) does a grave disservice to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the country in general. What you have done is nothing less than ensure that commercial weather reporting agencies have a taxpayer-funded data source that taxpayers are prohibited from enjoying.
Rest assured I will be monitoring the progress of this bill through the Senate and the House.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
It's even more than just private individuals now using the NWS data. My employer was paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for Accuweather forecast data that they FTPd to us daily. When the NWS started offering downloads of their GRIB US forecast files, we cancelled the Accuweather service and started using the GRIBs.
The funny thing is that it wasn't really a financially driven decision for us. We wanted the forecast information for every zipcode whereas Accuweather forced us to request the addition of new forecast zipcodes one by one from their sales rep. The sales rep would then insist on finding out what new customer of ours was using the data, and the sales rep would then contact +our+ customer to try to sell them additional weather services. We are not in the weather service business and it was very, very annoying.
One of the original homes for geeks is the National Weather Service. There's gagetry galore and tons of science. I'm glad the folks at the NWS are taking advantage of newer web technologies.
In fact, the NWS is one of the few government functions I feel is worthy of my tax dollars. This function is too much of a public good to be left in the hands of for profit companies.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
I'm a meteorologist (or a meaty urologist - I can never remember). It's tough to believe there is any scientific discipline better suited for computer manipulation than the weather. For years, even before the advent of today's high speed computing, data was collected in a very systematic way, making it easier to compile and compare. Because I know there are so many reading this with the ability to advance the art, let me point you to a few data sources. Each of the files at this site contains all the world's weather observations for a since hour. Here's how to translate that. Here's forecast info from the GFS model, a time series for single points covering a full week's weather. Here's the same for the shorter range NAM model. The Weather Service even developed this free "Swiss Army Knife" program to read them called BUFKIT. BUFKIT has saved my sorry butt on more than one occasion. Here are MOS forecasts (dynamic model forecasts 'massaged' to take into account local climatology). The NWS is just scratching the surface, but it's getting better all the time. I look at my relationship with NWS as a partnership, not a competition.
Because weather.gov is so good and ad free, people prefer to use it.
:-).
Same here in Canada. The govermental weather site is the most visited website of Canada (about 18 millions hits per day IIRC). http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/
For-profit organizations try to offer value-added products, but it's crippled with ads. And what many clients do not know, they (example http://meteomedia.com/) basicly simply repackage and reinterpret the data the government sells them (I work for the Canadian Meteorological Centre
Animoog.org
To those who don't know. Rick Santorum (bought and sold by accuweather which is a Pennsylvania corp) is proposing a bill that would kill free NWS information in favor of paid for info from greedy corporations like Accuweather. Since the NWS provides the bulk of Accuweather's infornation, we would essentially be paying a tax on this information and then paying accuweather to present it to us. It is almost like letting companies charge tolls on public roads that were built with public tax dollars. Pretty great huh?
For those of you who realize what a douchebag Rick Santorum is, I bring you the following link:
http://www.spreadingsantorum.com/
Also, here is a link about his proposed bill to the No Child Left behind act forcing educators to talk about "Intelligent" design. (Oh the irony!)
Santorum Amendment
Here is a link to the wikipedia arcticle about the comments he made that started the whole gay controversy.
Santorum Controversy
Enjoy.
You know, if more young people voted in America, it would be my hope that scumbags such as Santorum wouldn't see the light of day. Campaign donations need to be the first to go. What the bill that santorum is introducing would do is cut the public off from something that it pays for and something that Accuweather uses. Do you think accuweather has their own satellites up there? We don't need accuweather. We NEED the NWS.
zosxavius photography
Just don't go to the first Google link for Senator Santorum! :)
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
...and SKYWARN folks have known for quite awhile that weather people, 'specially NWS, are some of the biggest geeks and geek-friend people around. =)
There's a significant number of Mets that also sling a little code on their off-hours. Naturally, they like to code new weather data manipulation and presentation applications.
They are also Open-Source friendly. The computer we use down there runs Fedora Core 3 and Firefox (at my insistence, and it was fine with them). Their AWIPS workstations run Red Hat Linux and feature 3 flat-panel montors. They are the coolest things, these AWIPS workstations. (If memory serves, the acronym means "Advanced Weather Information Presentation System").
But there are two truly remarkable things about the people that work there that I have noticed. First, they are about the smartest group of people that I have ever worked with.
Second, they truly have a dedication to protect and serve the public. That might sound corny to some, but not to me. They take pride in trying to warn the public of impending severe weather, and are genuinely concerned about the public's safety.
And while they cannot publicly comment on issues such as the misguided Senator Santorum's attempt to make them work for large corporations, I can almost guarantee that they aren't happy about it (based on a few private conversations I've had with some of the staff).
I have a deep respect for these people and do hope that Santorum's attempt to screw the public does not pass.
Corporate competition is a good thing. Restricting data to just corporations is what is not a good thing. Accuweather usually nails forecasts pretty well, and presents it better than the National Weather Service does. The Weather Channel happens to have talking heads on TV, even though their forecasts aren't always right. It's the site to go to for mom and dad. It took me a few months to get around the NWS site, as good as it is.
I'm getting the impression that the higher-modded posts want companies like Accuweather to just "go away". That would be a bad thing. I can't help but think the competition has helped our forecasts to this very day.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
One, the NWS predates AccuWeather, both in general and in terms of Web presence. So in this case it's the private sector competing against the government, not the reverse; AccuWeather is the newcomer. Are you suggesting that if some guy wants to provide a service which the government already performs, the government should simply stop providing that service so the guy can have a monopoly? Businesses have no inherent right to success in a capitalist system; they (ideally) earn their success by being better than the alternatives. AccuWeather is not trying to keep the government from starting a new service; it's trying to force the government to dismantle a service which existed long before they did. Whether the government ought to be providing that service in the first place may be a matter of debate, but it's beyond the scope of this question.
Two, others have already pointed out that AccuWeather does surprisingly little work of its own. It takes data collected at taxpayer expense, repackages it, and sells it. Certainly AccuWeather has the right to try doing this if they want, but what right to they have to say that the government shouldn't provide that same data to anyone else it wants? AccuWeather is not paying for this data; there is no contractual relationship between them and the government. If they want a contract, that's fine, but they should pay for it in that case; after all, one-sided contracts aren't valid.
The only issue the public needs to worry about is reasonable access to the data (within limits) that they paid for. Nothing more, nothing less.
Funny, I thought what the public needed to worry about was an obnoxious little company in Central PA telling the federal government what it is and is not allowed to do with the data that we as taxpayers all pay for.
I must have been mistaken.
Accuweather can do all the value-add it wants, that is called "business", but telling the national weather service it cannot provide this data to the public in any usable fashion is not "business". It is showing that they are unable to add enough value to the data they get to re-sell it to the people who paid for it in the first place.
And what are these "limits" you speak of that can be applied to reasonable access? I was not aware limits should be in place to data the government provides to aid navigation (boat and plane), civil service, and the public at large regarding weather.
Finkployd
considering weather.gov took me all of 2 clicks to get to Elk Rapids, MI...family cottage location, with all of like 5 friggin streets.
I'd say they're providing pretty good local forecasts. I'm currently outside DC and yes, the local sources are much better; but hey it's a big market here.
Those living in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I'm sure they won't have those resources so this is pretty good it seems to me.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people