Comments on: Mashup Google with NOAA, and you get -- forecasts!

Mashup Google with NOAA, and you get -- forecasts!

jasper411 — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:00:58 -0800

Enter a zip code, a city name, or just point and click on a map (continental US and Hawaii only, alas). A 5 day forecast will appear at the bottom of the screen (including some cheesy little pictures illustrating, like rain and fog, just in case you forget what they look like).

By: geoff.

geoff. — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:03:51 -0800

Cool, live radar overlays would be even more cool.

By: Ickster

Ickster — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:04:42 -0800

Ummm, that's interesting and all, but clicking on the map isn't really that much easier (and much less accurate) than just going to the NWS site and entering your location. Too many people wanting to show that they too can do AJAX.

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:13:33 -0800

This is kinda worthless. Who doesn't know their zip code? What is the map doing there?

By: ChasFile

ChasFile — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:15:18 -0800

This is maybe the least impressive thing I've seen in a long, long time.

By: jasper411

jasper411 — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:16:34 -0800

selfnoise - you could point to a city you're about to fly to, where you may not know the zip code.

By: birdherder

birdherder — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:19:42 -0800

Yahoo and countless others have let me know this information by placename or ZIP code since what 1994? Sure no one has bothered to show me a map of the US at the same time. I really was expecting to see a sat view or up-close pic with an overlay of clouds like on the doppler 9000 channel 36 has.

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:22:10 -0800

Jasper - It would take you less time to type the city name up in the box, at which point the map is once again useless to you.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:27:45 -0800

This would be handy for travel. Lots of times I'm headed to a major city and the weather sites want so much detail (you entered new york, did you mean one of the three airports? or upstate? or somewhere in new jersey?)

By: beagle

beagle — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:28:14 -0800

More interesting tries at marrying Google Maps with weather are here and here.

By: Eekacat

Eekacat — Thu, 18 May 2006 14:50:43 -0800

Not like there aren't any zip code finders on the internets....

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:53:53 -0800

thanks for not calling it web 2.0 seriously.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:12:43 -0800

It is a thinly disguised plot to cause all those simpering TV weather persons to become redundant. Can't be all bad.

By: lelilo

lelilo — Thu, 18 May 2006 18:08:33 -0800

The map for our town shows the weather Today, Tonight, Tomorrow, Tomorrow Night, Sunday, Sunday Night, Monday, Monday Night, Tuesday, Tuesday Night. What happened to Saturday? (Which actually is the day I was wondering about, since all my kid's Little League games/practices have been rained out lately.)

By: Mikey-San

Mikey-San — Thu, 18 May 2006 19:18:13 -0800

Thank you for not mentioniong "Web 2.0", but fuck "mashup". Just say "mix" or "blend". There is no reason to be Trendy McDoctorow. Anyone else tired of "mashup" as well?

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Thu, 18 May 2006 20:44:47 -0800

Yeah - without some kind of actual reason for having the map, like selectable radar overlays, this is pretty pointless.

By: surlycat

surlycat — Thu, 18 May 2006 23:20:17 -0800

OK, it's not trendy, but it has weather maps. In particular, there's a java app to display all the last hour's meteorological observations at airports all over the country. Go here for METARs. If you want to know how much your air travel is going to suck, check out the airmets.

By: nev

nev — Fri, 19 May 2006 07:06:56 -0800

I tried to use NOAA data to overlay text forecasts on Google Calendar -- so I could see at a glance whether I was really going hiking on Sunday like my schedule said. The NOAA SOAP interface seemed totally broken, though, so I gave up (I wasn't interested in screen-scraping).

By: bensinc

bensinc — Fri, 19 May 2006 09:03:00 -0800

Weather Underground has a very nice Google Maps / weather mashup. It displays data from user's personal weather stations as well as actual weather stations. My station is somewhere around in that link.

By: jasper411

jasper411 — Fri, 19 May 2006 11:28:20 -0800

bensinc - personal weather stations that broadcast? I've never heard of such a thing - that is so cool! How does that work? I googled for personal weather stations and find lots of for sale sites, but I can't find a site that would have basic information about how it all works.

By: bensinc

bensinc — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:34:26 -0800

I'm not sure if "broadcast" is the most accurate term, but Weather Underground lets you send them data from your personal weather station and integrates it into their system. If you look up the weather for 50310, they actually give you my data because I happen to be the closest station to the center of the zip code.

By: gkr

gkr — Fri, 19 May 2006 17:19:51 -0800

sounds like a great tool for worriers... get a nice dashboard of several friends/relatives you'd prefer to evacuate personally I love AJAX ;-)