Time to Switch to METAR

[HomeSeerLover]

I think that switching to METAR may be the best answer at least for the US. The data could be obtained either off a web page or by a direct ftp download into a hs directory. A HS script could them translate the METAR code into individual values (Temp, wind, Condition) and then save into a .ini which individual weather scripts could call.

Shouldn't be too much work to make a HS METAR plugin.

A quick Google search ca,\me up with several commercial scripts to convert METAR data. metar.pl is a good example. (I am not suggest that we steal their code, but it would be easy to convert to a plug in with the $$ going to metar.pl or we could brew our own (I prefer free community HS scripts)

Matt's Weather looks like a nice GNU General Public License PHP based script. (Has a complete list of Location Codes)


Pls post your comments ideas below.

[This message was edited by HomeSeerLover on Saturday, 23 November 2002 at 04:16 PM.]

[Rupp]

This is the perfect excuse to get me off my lazy butt and convert this to use my weather station information. Th weather channel info is good but not as good a in the back yard.

-Rupp
...One Nation Under GOD, Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice For All.

[HomeSeerLover]

Rupp, the more I think about this,the better I like the idea. The basic plan would be to create a HS plugin that would download the METAR data and then store each datapoint into a .ini. It woiuld then be east for individual scriptws to call for the data.

It looks like METAR data is available worldwide and is very reliable.

list of the country codes of the more popular European Countries (the country code is the first 2 letters of the IACO code).

[This message was edited by HomeSeerLover on Saturday, 23 November 2002 at 04:05 PM.]

[Rupp]

The only things you'll miss on METAR is the audio weather report and 36 hour forecast. I normally do not use these but they are nice to have.

-Rupp
...One Nation Under GOD, Indivisible, With Liberty And Justice For All.

[HomeSeerLover]

Rupp, the Audio Weather Report is an Add-In anyway, it doesn't come from weather.com and can be added to any weather page/source.

BTW, my local NWS has started providing an online .wav version of the old style telephone weather report. San Diego NWS Weather

36 Hour is another story, but probably could be included using a download from a weather page.

[HomeSeerLover]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> If someone's going to write a script or plug-in that regularly snarfs and stores METAR data for other scripts to use, perhaps they should also grab IWIN forecasts and store them the same way<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Frank, I think that the main advantage os using the METAR data is that it is in raw format and other than splitting the METAR data, it isn't necessary to do any parsing. The METAR data will remain very stable.

METAR KMYF 232353Z AUTO 27007KT 10SM BKN024 16/10 A3002 RMK AO2 SLP165 T01560100 10178 20150 53002 TSNO

translates to

23 03:53PM W 8 10 Mostly Cloudy 60 50 69 30.02

Pulling the data off a web page works, but is always at the mercy of the web page's HTML.

OTOH, the IWIN forecast information is useful and I use IWIN for both forecasts and weather alerts.

Both the IWIN and METAR data comes from NOAA and should be very accurate.

BTW, nice code in Outlook Weather!

[bdickhaus]

Until this week, weather.com local forecast was a good, easy to parse source of weather data. Then they changed the format of the web page. MSNBC could do that tomorrow, and then we'd still be stuck. I think a combination of METAR and IWIN is the way to go, that's probably where the weather.com and MSNBC sites get their data.

Bill

[jruby]

Hi,
took a look at this and would like to add it to my web page, could someone help me figure how to get it intrigrated in to a web page? I think I have it setup at
http://www.blindsea.com/mweather/mweather.php
but something is messed up.
1 the change to a different area the submit putton is pointing to matt scripts yet and
there is no instructions on where to place the info to intrigrate it in to a normal web page.

Thanks for any help. feel free to email me if that would be best as not to side track the forum.

[HomeSeerLover]

Seems like we are discussion two separate types of data.

The 1st is basically raw weather demographics. The 2nd is weather forecasts and warning.

The weatherman script basically pulls the weather demographics off the weather.com web page and then inserts the data into a GUI. This all started before HS could do .asp pages and it was a big thrill to update HS virtual devices with the weather demographics like temperature.

Weather.com seems to change its HTML format at least once a year. Someone then has to rewrite the parsing for weatherman.

I am simply proposing that we do the same thing using METAR data. The big advantage is that METAR is a set format that will not change. It is easy to obtain either by an ftp download or off of a HTML web page.

It will be very easy to parse the METAR data.
The only problem (at least for me) is learning how to decipher the METAR coding. I will download the METAR Code Handbook and see what I can learn.

For forecasts and warnings, I agree that IWIN is a good choice.

Cheers

[billjohnson395]

I wouldn't have any problem working on this, because Weather.Com continues to cheese me off with the constant changes. It even looks like it would be fairly easy to adapt the Weatherman scripts to parse METAR data.

A quick pass at the METAR spec shows some interesting coding considerations (like, it's OK to omit data along with the delimiting space!), but nothing obvious as far as insurmountable problems, so far.

What's the FTP address for the hourly METAR files?

[electron]

parsing data like that is easy, I will take a look at it sometime this week myself.

[Hunter Green]

Yes, observations and forecasts are different things. ::sigh:: Personally, I'm a lot more interested in forecasts. But I've retracted the question.

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[HomeSeerLover]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Observations and forecasts <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just different information and different uses.

If the observation is "Rain" The HA system can shut the windows and turn off the sprinklers.

If the forecast is rain, the HA system can remind you to pack an umbrella &lt;g&gt;.

[HomeSeerLover]

METAR FTP

[HomeSeerLover]

I just browsed to the METAR FTP site and found a directory named Decoded.

It contains the decoded METAR data in a .txt file.

This would be a breeze to parse!!

e.g. for San Diego

ftp://weather.noaa.gov/data/observat...coded/KSAN.TXT

San Diego, San Diego International-Lindbergh Field, CA, United States (KSAN) 32-44-01N 117-10-59W 12M
Nov 25, 2002 - 10:51 PM EST / 2002.11.26 0351 UTC
Wind: from the NNW (340 degrees) at 6 MPH (5 KT):0
Visibility: 5 mile(s):0
Sky conditions: clear
Weather: haze
Temperature: 61.0 F (16.1 C)
Dew Point: 52.0 F (11.1 C)
Relative Humidity: 72%
Pressure (altimeter): 29.98 in. Hg (1015 hPa)
ob: KSAN 260351Z 34005KT 5SM HZ CLR 16/11 A2998 RMK AO2 SLP152 T01610111
cycle: 4

You can find yout METAR code here NWS Internet Weather Source

[This message was edited by HomeSeerLover on Monday, 25 November 2002 at 11:37 PM.]