True weather forecasts for the USA (from NWS), BETA

[par]

Dear friends in US,
today we are opening National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts to replace yr.no forecasts in the United States.

People say NWS forecasts are much more precise for the USA.
That is why we have made them available for you.
We want YoWindow to be as much precise about the weather as possible.

This task appeared to be a hard one, it took around a week of my work.
That is why YoWindow evolution has been on hold.

NWS weather forecasts is a BETA feature.
That means we do not officially release it.
There must be some errors inside.
That's why I encourage you to use NWS forecasts during the next week and report all the problems you may find.

To enjoy NWS forecasts you have to download the latest RC.
http://yowindow.com/rc.html
Then in Options/Advanced/Weather check "NWS forecasts for USA" check-box.
Then navigate to any US location and press F5 to update the weather forecast.

You may compare NWS and yr.no forecasts and see a significant difference.
I hope all my efforts were not in vain.

For the test purpose you may compare weather forecast displayed by YoWindow
and the official NWS forecast by clicking the link in the copyright bar at the bottom - "NWS".

Enjoy true US forecasts

PS

As usual along with a great feature creeps a little bug.

1. There is a problem with max/min temperature in NWS forecasts.
Hourly temperature may not reach max or min day temperature.
For example take a look at this LA forecast for the next Tuesday

Max temperature is 71, but the maximum hourly tempeature reported for Tuesday is 67.
YoWindow computes max and min temparture itself based on the hourly temperature data.
Because of this YoWindow max/min and NWS max/min may be different.
I don't like this and you will not like this.
Do you know how to fix this?


Pasha

[weatherock]

Dear friends in US,
today we are opening National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts to replace yr.no forecasts in the United States.

People say NWS forecasts are much more precise for the USA.
That is why we have made them available for you.
We want YoWindow to be as much precise about the weather as possible.

This task appeared to be a hard one, it took around a week of my work.
That is why YoWindow evolution has been on hold.

NWS weather forecasts is a BETA feature.
That means we do not officially release it.
There must be some errors inside.
That's why I encourage you to use NWS forecasts during the next week and report all the problems you may find.

To enjoy NWS forecasts you have to download the latest RC.
http://yowindow.com/rc.html
Then in Options/Advanced/Weather check "NWS forecasts for USA" check-box.
Then navigate to any US location and press F5 to update the weather forecast.

You may compare NWS and yr.no forecasts and see a significant difference.
I hope all my efforts were not in vain.

For the test purpose you may compare weather forecast displayed by YoWindow
and the official NWS forecast by clicking the link in the copyright bar at the bottom - "NWS".

Enjoy true US forecasts

PS

As usual along with a great feature creeps a little bug.

1. There is a problem with max/min temperature in NWS forecasts.
Hourly temperature may not reach max or min day temperature.
For example take a look at this LA forecast for the next Tuesday

Max temperature is 71, but the maximum hourly tempeature reported for Tuesday is 67.
YoWindow computes max and min temparture itself based on the hourly temperature data.
Because of this YoWindow max/min and NWS max/min may be different.
I don't like this and you will not like this.
Do you know how to fix this?


Pasha

Will this beta feature of the NWS be available for your weather widget in the future? I live in the USA and there is not a nearby NWS location that is even close to my location. That is one reason that I prefer YoWindow with yr.no. With YoWindow using yr.no I have a nearby location that is just a stone's throw from me. Actually YoWindow offers to me 10 locations that are really close-by to me, while the NWS only offers locations that are really far from me.
I can understand how and why the NWS might be preferred by some. Those people may be closer to a NWS location than I am. A NWS location that is farther away from me would not give me correct results (or any results) for my area anyway. The closest NWS location to me is an hour's drive. The closest YoWindow, yr.no location to me is just a 5 minute drive. So which would you think that I prefer?

[jmcmurry]

weatherrock,

Where in the country are you located? Did you know that the NWS will provide forecasts for you location either by zip code or latitude/longitude? It could be that yr.no is more accurate for you because they may very well use some different weather models. I'm just interested to hear this.

- Jim

[weatherock]

weatherrock,

Where in the country are you located? Did you know that the NWS will provide forecasts for you location either by zip code or latitude/longitude? It could be that yr.no is more accurate for you because they may very well use some different weather models. I'm just interested to hear this.

- Jim

My information can be found in this forum at these 2 locations:
http://yowindow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=727
and
http://yowindow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=725
My actual location is Mount Vernon, Kentucky, USA. The closest YoWindow can come is just a 5 minute drive from me in Renfro Valley, Kentucky, USA. I have all kinds of widgets, java scripts on my website that uses the NWS information. As I said in this forum, the closest NWS office to me is an hours drive from me or a little more. Any kind of widget or java script that uses the NWS information for my area is very general in terms and not that specific. I live in a very small rural town. If you live in a more populated area you can easily find widgets or java scripts that are more specific and provide much more information. True, YoWindow doesn't provide the information for my specific local area of Mount Vernon, Kentucky. But YoWindow does provide excellently graphic and very pleasing graphic information for Renfro Valley, Kentucky which is just a stone's throw from me. Now the NWS does not provide any kind of specific and graphically pleasing widget for my specific area. However, I can get (and I already have one on my website) a very basic 7 day forecast of forecasted conditions that just includes the high and low temperatures for the next 7 days for my specific area.
I will say that none of this is the fault of the NWS. I apologize if I gave that impression. It's the fault of being from a very small area where no one (except YoWindow) is interested in creating programs, java scripts and/or widgets that can use the available NWS information. It's only YoWindow that stepped up and created the local information in an exceptionally pleasing format.
You are right. Anyone could do it very easily using the NWS information. But they haven't. At least not for my very small rural town. It's only YoWindow that stepped up and got the job done very pleasingly. As soon as I found YoWindow, I immediately grabbed it.
What I am basically saying is that YoWindow is filling the void for those of us that live in small towns that program developers have failed to develope using the available NWS information.

--
weatherock

[par]

Rock, I just want to clear things up.
YoWindow is not a very special in terms of meteorology.
All the weather is taken from 3 weather sources:
-current weather - METAR weather stations network
-forecasts - yr.no or NWS
YoWindow picks the closest METAR station to your place and takes the weather forecast for coordinates of your place.
It does not mean that YoWindow will give you information with a higher accurancy than any other weather service.
You may receive the current weather from METAR station that is 100 km away and YoWindow makes it look for you as though the weather is observed at your location.
Please be aware of this.

[ace2701]

I downloaded the NWS beta and it seems to be working fine. However, I didn't
see any auto updating. I opened the options.xml file in the program and noticed
the line autoupdate was set to "false". I reset it to "true", and it seems to be
working now. Can you edit the program this way, or was it just my imagination?

[par]

YoWindow keeps most of its settings in options.xml file.
So yes, you may edit it to control YoWindow behavior, but it's more handy to control the auto-update through Options dialog.

Much thanks for reporting the error with weather auto-update.
I have missed it!
Now it is corrected.

[weatherock]

Rock, I just want to clear things up.
YoWindow is not a very special in terms of meteorology.
All the weather is taken from 3 weather sources:
-current weather - METAR weather stations network
-forecasts - yr.no or NWS
YoWindow picks the closest METAR station to your place and takes the weather forecast for coordinates of your place.
It does not mean that YoWindow will give you information with a higher accurancy than any other weather service.
You may receive the current weather from METAR station that is 100 km away and YoWindow makes it look for you as though the weather is observed at your location.
Please be aware of this.

Maybe I am not explaining this very well. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. Please let me explain this. Using the information for widgets, there is not much information that is in the form of a widget that I can use using the NWS data. So my choices are limited if I want to use a widget that is as close as possible to me. But the YoWindow, yr.no data gives me much more choices for widgets that are extremely close to me. The NWS does not. I use several widgets for weather on my websites. Of course they vary a little with information. All of them say differently. So I am now comparing the YoWindow widget to the NWS widgets that I use to see which is more accurate for my specific area. The YoWindow widget says it is the closest to me, almost next door. So far (just a week or 10 days) the information is as good or maybe a little better than the NWS widgets.
The METAR used for my location is often wrong, but it is close enough. Most often, most widgets use the METAR of KLOZ. The METAR of KSME should be used because it is closer to me. But by default, the NWS almost always uses the METAR of KLOZ.
To use a widget, it would look much better on a website to use the widget that says my town. YoWindow does that the best. The NWS does not. So now I will compare the YoWindow widget information to the widgets I use with the NWS to see which is best. So far the YoWindow widget appears as accurate as the NWS widgets. Maybe the YoWindow widget might be a little better. I will compare both and see.
But I do like the YoWindow widget appearance much better than those using the NWS data. I just wish there was a way to use the YoWindow widget with the NWS data so that I could compare those also.

--
weatherock

[par]

Thank you!
I will give you a control over forecast provider for the widget shortly.

[weatherock]

Thank you!
I will give you a control over forecast provider for the widget shortly.

I have downloaded YoWindow and have it installed on my computer. I am using NWS with it. On my website I am using the YoWindow widget using yr.no. I like the comparison. Really not that much difference between the two.

--
weatherock