Weather Map Data Porn

May 9, 2016 4:16 PM

The National Weather Service's Enhanced Data Display is in its experimental but still fun-to-play-with stage. It's a product of the Charleston, WV, NWS station's Weather Ready Nation Pilot Project. There are demos and tutorials on NWS Charleston's Youtube page. Mobile version
posted by not_on_display (20 comments total)

Very cool that the NWS is doing this.

After toying about with it I think I still prefer Weather Underground's Wundermap.
posted by sp160n at 4:57 PM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's very cool. Works great on the iPad, too, which can be a rarity for things like this. Good job, NWS!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:18 PM on May 9, 2016

Very nice. Not quite as intuitive as weatherspark but a very good start.
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:26 PM on May 9, 2016

And it is built on open source frameworks(qooxdoo, which I have never used, and open layers, which is a very powerful tool for advanced web maps) good for them. I was totally expecting yet another arc mapper.
posted by rockindata at 5:28 PM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Holy Java '97, Batman. That's a dense, cryptic UI.

I'm with sp160n. The kids at NWS need to spend a month or so playing with Wundermap and really up their game here.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:09 PM on May 9, 2016

"Very nice. Not quite as intuitive as weatherspark but a very good start." Well, now that Weatherspark is dead, I guess I will mess around with the NWS displays...
posted by Patapsco Mike at 6:15 PM on May 9, 2016

This is amazing and so much more powerful than Wundermap.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:20 PM on May 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Weatherspark doesn't look dead to me.
posted by Death and Gravity at 6:29 PM on May 9, 2016

Clicking around a bit more this really does expose a lot more data than Wundermap etc.

Takes a while to get a handle on the UI.
posted by sp160n at 7:17 PM on May 9, 2016

The Javascript they are using is qooxdoo for the GUI and OpenLayers for the map. Also uses Flot and D3. I am impressed the site seems to work on Mobile Safari. The names in the Credits suggests this was done by NWS employees, not a contract, which is encouraging.

NWS is a great part of government and they produce and distribute amazing data. I just wish they were a little more up to date with web tech trends. This site is way more advanced than existing NWS services though, so it's an improvement!

(Also I totally tempered my snark when I saw they credited me by name for wind rose code I wrote a couple years back. That was kind of them! Although I haven't found it in action; anyone found a wind rose on the site?)
posted by Nelson at 7:20 PM on May 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Weatherspark doesn't look dead to me.

It used to be a flash app with a scrolling graph of weather model predictions with a drop down selector for the three major models with the ability to also have split screen with an animated radar map.

It was way better than the Wundermap. I miss it dearly.
posted by srboisvert at 7:23 PM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Clicking around a bit more this really does expose a lot more data than Wundermap etc.

Takes a while to get a handle on the UI.

Yeah, the more I fiddled around, the more neat stuff I found.
posted by not_on_display at 7:28 PM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh man I missed this bad news from Weatherspark

Switching the Dashboard to HTML5, which would offer more map options, would cost vastly more than any plausible return.

What a shame. I was wondering what justified all their investment in the first place, looks like it was designed to be an ad factory. Sigh.
posted by Nelson at 7:31 PM on May 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not to continue the derail but I too am very sad about weatherspark, to the point where I am seriously considering trying to build a replacement.
posted by ropeladder at 11:29 PM on May 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I appreciate this is experimental, but if you need a video tutorial, surely that's telling you something?

The Weatherspark Dashboard was a truly beautiful thing; deep but intuitive. There seems to be a problem with Flash map availability, which is fair enough, but the interactive graphs were the main selling point. Multiple pleas for reinstatement will no doubt go unheeded - the developers seem to be at the end of their tether.

From a UK perspective, there is nothing in the same ballpark - especially when the Met Office gives us this (not a 1998 Wayback Machine link, btw).
posted by moonface at 5:13 AM on May 10, 2016

moonface, what a nice catalog of phone app screens that is!

Oh, wait... :7(
posted by wenestvedt at 6:22 AM on May 10, 2016

IN RELATED NEWS...THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ANNOUNCED...
THAT IT WILL STOP USING ALL CAPS...IN ITS FORECASTS. SPOTTER 
ACTIVATION IS NOT NECESSARY AT THIS TIME...

posted by not_on_display at 4:51 PM on May 10, 2016

IS this thing a weatherspark replacement? Please, I want to see averages and history and multiple predictions of rain amounts so I can make my own decision about what the weather might be!
posted by rebent at 7:24 PM on May 10, 2016

Nelson: Although I haven't found it in action; anyone found a wind rose on the site?

Yes! I found one.

1) Click on a town, and a NWS graphical forecast window will open
2) Under the "Hourly Graph" Tab, at the bottom center of that tab, you will see a yellow button that says "Show Wind Rose"
3) Click on that.
posted by not_on_display at 6:45 PM on May 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, thanks not_on_display. That's totally my code. Awesome!
posted by Nelson at 8:29 PM on May 16, 2016 [1 favorite]