Reminder for those looking for weather forecasts and info in the United States: https://www.weather.gov is the best source, you pay for it with your taxpayer dollars, and it's FREE! #wx#weather#forecasts
@ai6yr Also https://mobile.weather.gov looks great on a phone and can be installed as an “app” on iOS by going to the share sheet, scrolling down to Add To Home Screen, and clicking “Add.”
@ai6yr@philbaker1@mlanger I've geeked out over that stuff since I was a kid. My dad and I talk about the discussion regularly during stormy periods. It's great fun to try to read the tea leaves.
@ai6yr@philbaker1@mlanger@douglasvb The link to NOAA's latest forecast discussion used to be available as part of a GIS layer. That made it easy to find and any GIS savvy software could display that data.
Earlier this year NOAA moved a bunch of GIS layers to Amazon's cloud. But the layer with the link to forecast discussion went away. As a result, I added code to GISsurfer to produce those links on-the-fly when the user clicks the map.
@mlanger@ai6yr@douglasvb better combinatory data display on other apps? Dark Sky was amazing before Apple ate it, and even their inclusion if the extra sources and libraries still hasnt made Apple Weather at the same level. Wundeground's 10 day has no equivalent I could ever find on a gov site. Windy doesn't really have an equivalent either.
I've tried all the ones you mentioned and I always come back to weather.gov. Even Windy, which I use while # boating to get wind and wave heights, isn't always accurate. When I'm boating, I usually check multiple sources and go with whatever is the consensus. NWS is almost always right.
Also, it is impossible to accurately predict the weather 10 days out. I don't trust any forecasts that go beyond three days.
@mlanger I think that NWS accuracy is a good point, and a good reason to use it when you need it. 10 days can be accurate enough (ex for is it going to be in a general temp range, precipitation that day) esp. for use cases like planning a long trip. The main point I was focused on though is for general purposes getting it all concisely (instead of many centered far from me maps and 10 charts to get the same data) might be why people goto "inaccurate" non-primary source but better UX apps first.
@ai6yr I wish they could make the various interfaces more consistent though. My go-to site for viewing precipitation data is https://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/ol.php?type=precip. But that's just for CA and NV and a bit of OR and AZ. I've never been able to find something as detailed or flexible for other parts of the country. Can't find it on the weather.gov site either.
In the world of apps and walled gardens, my students today did not know weather.gov existed, and have been relying on their phones (mostly Apple's weather app) for forecasts. (not whining, just observing; finding that making assumptions doesn't help them learn!)
@MsMerope I've taught this class many times before, but I need to remember to ask more often if people have heard of resources before... at least for this batch of students, everything I provided was BRAND NEW to them. (which is good, I'm doing my job).
@ai6yr oh definitely...
when we teach Basic we show people PulsePoint and WatchDuty along with the tv/radio stations that are the designated local emergency stations - oh and we talk about weather radios
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