Weather Visualization better than the window

March 10, 2011 11:24 AM

WeatherSpark is a new weather forecast visualization tool that will make you think you are living in the year 2011.

Data including cloud cover, rain and snow fall, averages and extremes are combined in an intuitive data rich format that beats the pants off looking out the window.
US and non-US locations are supported, the former via weather.gov and the later via met.no

I especially enjoyed being able to scroll forward several weeks to verify that the cold gray of mud season will most likely end (eventually).

posted by ChrisHartley (37 comments total)

Pretty neat. I don't think that graphing percentage chance of rain is particularly intuitive though... what you want to see is how much rain, but I guess the sites don't make that available. For instance, here we are supposed to get a lot of rain, but the graph just has it pegged as 100% chance of rain for the next day.
posted by smackfu at 11:32 AM on March 10, 2011

This is interesting... It appears that, in Brooklyn at least, there is a definite trend towards temperatures increasing from a low in January throughout March and peaking in July/August.
posted by nathancaswell at 11:33 AM on March 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

That is quite interesting.

(Although it doesn't know about microclimates, so it gave me some strange results for Berkeley, CA -- apparently the closest official weather station is in Concord, which is inland and therefore has much different weather. But hey, we're only living in 2011.)
posted by madcaptenor at 11:35 AM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

It worked. I looked out the window and it is raining!!!!

Actually this is pretty neat. I like it much better than the other weather websites and the 11"00 o'clock news.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:36 AM on March 10, 2011

Ooh, very cool. I was just being annoyed at weather.com this morning for making it hard to find the recent historical temperature data (i.e. how cold was it at 9AM today).
posted by statolith at 11:40 AM on March 10, 2011

My precioussssssss graphs! I love this, I love this very very very very very much. It is going to be incredibly useful for gardening. I can compare weather trends last year with date I recorded for my area (in terms of budding, leafing out, blossoming, first harvest, etc) and hopefully make some semi-accurate predictions for this year!
posted by lydhre at 11:40 AM on March 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is one of the coolest weather sites I've seen. Thank you!
posted by hotelechozulu at 11:41 AM on March 10, 2011

That's funny that is giving strange results for Berkeley since the developers appear to live in San Francisco. You can also overlay results (click-shift or click-enter), handy if you are thinking of moving or planning a vacation in August.
posted by ChrisHartley at 11:42 AM on March 10, 2011

This site is superbly well executed. Weather Underground could learn a few things. Given how much data they push, it's remarkable how fast it is. It's really useful data for a variety of purposes; I've been looking for exactly this tool to help my flying.

If you ever want to roll a site like this yourself, Weather Graphics sells deep archives of US weather data. I ordered a set for myself, although somehow I haven't quite gotten to doing anything with it :-P
posted by Nelson at 11:58 AM on March 10, 2011

Oh hell yes! Remember when Weatherunderground used to be good? Finally, a new site picks up the ball.
posted by DU at 11:59 AM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

this is freakin' sweet
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 12:04 PM on March 10, 2011

The information overload boggles the mind.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:04 PM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I notice the precipitation graph only shows the future probability. Would be nice to get the original probability for the past or the actual outcome. Or both.
posted by DU at 12:06 PM on March 10, 2011

In 2011, the primary tool I use to check the weather doesn't use Flash.
posted by mark242 at 12:07 PM on March 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

Would be nice to get the original probability for the past or the actual outcome

Isn't the actual outcome what it shows? Except it is just a full bar or not, because it either rained or it didn't. Or if you scale it down enough, it's a partial bar because it shows what percentage of that time it rained.
posted by smackfu at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2011

Thanks for this site. I now want to do some technical analysis and daytrade the weather.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

Vanity weather: I looked up what it was like when (and where) I was born.
posted by underthehat at 12:16 PM on March 10, 2011

Excellent. Every since Weather Underground's ghastly redesign, I have been looking for a clean and clear weather website. This is brilliant.
posted by fremen at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

ChrisHartley is my new wx hero. Nice find/share.
posted by hrbrmstr at 12:29 PM on March 10, 2011

The one thing Weather Underground did (before that godawful redesign) was give you the ability to ask for both C and F to display simultaneously. If this site did that, it would be perfect - and it's still worth switching from Weather Underground. Thanks!
posted by faineant at 12:35 PM on March 10, 2011

I love how you can expand the time frame to cover many years and the little weather info-blurbs along the top go right along with you, changing their timescales appropriately until each year is reduced one little box with appropriate pictograms of rain and clouds.

1983. New York. Mostly Cloudy; Light Rain. Yep. That's pretty much how I remember it.
posted by The Bellman at 12:42 PM on March 10, 2011

Probably the bestest thing about this site compared to other weather sites is that it displays percentile ranges for historical temps! I mean, average, high, and low aren't really that useful, in someways. But, knowing what range of temps that day fell into 80% of years? That's some good data.
posted by skynxnex at 12:44 PM on March 10, 2011

I didn't realize how much I couldn't stand Weather Underground's new interface until I saw this new awesomeness.
posted by vortex genie 2 at 12:45 PM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

wow, this is AMAZING, thanks for sharing! I especially like the historical data, which is still maddeningly difficult to access on other sites.
posted by ericbop at 12:51 PM on March 10, 2011

whoa. it was 90F with rain the day I was born? christonacrutch. feeling sorry for mom now. :\

One of my favorite weather sites is the University of Washington's Probability Forecast - Pacific northwest only, but excellent in terms of seeing the range of likely weather for the next couple of days.
posted by epersonae at 1:26 PM on March 10, 2011

Oooo. This is like Google Finance's graphs, only for the weather.
posted by limeonaire at 1:29 PM on March 10, 2011

The percentile information confirmed my suspicion that temperatures in Philadelphia vary more day-to-day in the winter than in the summer. I'd believed this basically all my life but it's hard to test that when all you have is averages and extremes. Extremes are kind of noisy.
posted by madcaptenor at 2:05 PM on March 10, 2011

However, Weather Underground does have links to undecoded aviation reports and forecasts (METAR, TAF, FA, etc. -- even notams). I couldn't see that anywhere on this site. (On the other hand, maybe it's some flash or javascript thingy that my various blockers killed.)

(When they kill classic.wunderground.com, I'll have to switch.)
posted by phliar at 2:23 PM on March 10, 2011

Isn't the actual outcome what it shows? Except it is just a full bar or not, because it either rained or it didn't.

You are right, it does. I didn't have it scaled enough to see the last time it rained, so it was all just white and empty.
posted by DU at 2:30 PM on March 10, 2011

I really, really love this -- even more than fullscreenweather.com. Thanks much!
posted by blucevalo at 2:44 PM on March 10, 2011

WeatherSpark is a new weather forecast visualization tool that will make you think you are living in the year 2011.

Clicks on link

500 Internal Server Error

The future is now!!!!!!!1
posted by sideshow at 3:40 PM on March 10, 2011

Ok, now it's working. Yeah, this is pretty sweet.
posted by sideshow at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2011

The one thing Weather Underground did (before that godawful redesign)

I have to ask, what don't you like about it?
I admit to being only an occasional user, but it doesn't seem to be horribly different than the previous design.
posted by madajb at 3:56 PM on March 10, 2011

I'm a little old school... I still prefer weather.unisys.com over all other sites.

I Gotta soft spot for their Mainframes...
posted by PROD_TPSL at 3:58 PM on March 10, 2011

WeatherSpark is cool, if a bit top-heavy.

This is a local weather station in someone's back yard, but it's great. Only for Calgary, but it gives me pretty much everything I want to know and is easy to glance at and get a feel for what's going on.
posted by sneebler at 5:38 PM on March 10, 2011

I'd like it a lot more if it was accurate. It isn't, at least for my current location.
posted by Wolof at 6:07 AM on March 11, 2011

I need to download the data so I can plot rainfall in southern Thailand against natural rubber prices and make myself a FORTUNE.

Quickly, people, time is money, how do I download the data?
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 9:12 AM on March 11, 2011