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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."
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
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.
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
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)
Now, if they could just offer real time radar feeds, I'd be happy.
Well, depending on where you look for the radar images, getting FREE updates every 5 minutes is pretty damn good. It works well for this armchair weather enthusiast. One alternative might be to pay $7/month for "real time" radar imagery with various enhancements.
I suppose the updates are only at every five minutes because in times of heavy weather, the forecasters need different types of data. The radar sweeps are done using 2 to 4 angles of elevation depending if they want to measure precipitation or storm relative velocities, for example.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
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.
The best you could possibly get, unless you plugged directly into the radar site is every 6 minutes. The radar sites only transmit new product images every 6 minutes when they're in rain mode, and only every 10 minutes when they're in clear-sky mode.
If you want as-up-to-date as possible, you need to get the NOAAPORT feed directly from satellite. If you've got access to an old 10-12 foot TVRO satellite dish, you can get either a DVB data receiver or a DVB card and the appropriate software from noaaport.net.
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
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