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Weather is big business. Farmers want to know when is the best time to plant (or harvest). Event organizers want to know if a thunderstorm might come up during an open-air concert. And the rest of us want to know about their daily commute and plans for the weekend barbeque.
During a chat not long ago in the #Soylent channel of SoylentNews' IRC server, I discovered there are likely others who have an interest in all things weather-related.
I thought it might be interesting to see what weather resources my fellow Soylentils use. Not just for forecasting, but for getting current conditions, and while we are at it, let's include space weather forecasts, too. Note: I live in the USA and my primary browser is Pale Moon; please submit comments with other resources!
- Broadcast media - Local radio / TV station broadcasts.
- The Weather Channel - Cable TV weather channel
- http://www.accuweather.com/ - online weather forecast
- http://www.intellicast.com/ - online weather forecast
- ForecastFox -- an addon for Firefox, it gets a localized report from AccuWeather and displays it in a toolbar in FireFox (original, FF v28+) browser.
- http://images.intellicast.com/WxImages/RadarLoop/usa_None_anim.gif - Radar Loop for entire USA.
- https://earth.nullschool.net/ - earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions
- http://en.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php - A worldwide, real time, community collaborative lightning location network.
- http://www.weather.gov/ US National Weather Service.
- http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/planetary-k-index - Planetary k-index -- likelihood of geomagnetic storms (aurora).
- http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/aurora-forecast-northern-hemisphere.jpg - visual prediction of aurora in northern hemisphere or southern hemisphere
Many of the sites require some Javascript, but I have had success using NoScript and selectively enabling from 1 to 4 domains to get things to work.
My favorite going-down-the-rabbit-hole site is at nullschool.net -- click on the word "earth" to bring up (and hide) a menu of features and presentations you can choose. Check out ocean currents and temps, surface winds and temps, etc. See their about page for a more detailed summary of the options.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dx3bydt3 on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:46AM (2 children)
I live in Canada, and in my area Environment Canada forecasts are the best of those available. They also make available quite a bit of forecast data, one form I like best is a set of hourly forecast maps generated twice a day, looking forward for the next 48 hours. The maps are available for temperature, wind, cloud cover, as well as some more astronomy relevant parameters, atmospheric seeing and transparency.
here's the page with links to these resources: http://weather.gc.ca/astro/index_e.html [weather.gc.ca]
These maps cover all of North America, not just Canada.
Here is a resource where you can get a simple colour coded hour by hour forecast chart for your area (North America only), created using this data: http://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/ [cleardarksky.com]
I have a script that builds a webpage with a similar chart for my location, ephemeris information for the sun, moon and visible planets (using PyEphem), NOAA space weather predictions, and aurora forecast maps.
Using an microcontroller, and some sensors I've got my own temperature, RH and barometric pressure data fed to my computer. I have chron scheduled script logging and plotting it every 5 minutes.
This was fun to set up, next I'll do the sensing bit over again using a raspberry pi and digital sensors.
I also recommend http://spaceweather.com/ [spaceweather.com] for summaries of space weather conditions as well as postings of current interesting atmospheric phenomena.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @02:02AM (1 child)
Inquiring minds want to know...with all that detailed information, do you ever go outside to enjoy good weather?(grin)
(Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Saturday July 22 2017, @02:48AM
More than you might expect, having the information allows one to plan ahead, and jump at the opportunity when the weather is ideal.