METAR (weather) access from pull-down menus

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I wrote an online program to access translated METARs via pull-down menus, which should make it easier to find the airport/reporting station of interest. It is "Translated US METARs for Drop Zones"

(It provides a somewhat easier method of accessing the METARs because the National Weather Service page requires that you know the identifier for the airport/reporting station. It also defaults to a translated report.)

It can be found at http://www.pcprg.com/programs.htm

Note that some reporting stations may not always have data available (for various reasons).

Also note that the reason I wrote it with an intermediate link is that so the request is made from your server, not ours.

For the other program I wrote a while back, "US Winds Aloft Forecast for Drop Zones" the request needs to go through our server, and although I tell people not to try to automate it because Winds Aloft data changes only every 6 hours, people still use it more often than needed.

It is just incredible now days how much weather information is available online. It will be worth your time to look around the National Weather Service web site and resources. It is pretty hard to not know what the weather is doing any more, (at least the current weather).

[DigitalDave 0]

That's pretty cool.

Maybe consider putting the states in a select menu and only display the station drop down for the chosen state so you don't have all 50 selects on the page at one time? It's simple with JQuery.

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DigitalDave

Maybe consider putting the states in a select menu and only display the station drop down for the chosen state so you don't have all 50 selects on the page at one time?

I thought about that and might change it later. I live in the St. Louis area, so I am always going between Illinois and Missouri, so it is actually fewer clicks to leave multiple states on the screen. 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Thanks for the comments.

[kallend 2,106]

Cool. Maybe we'll have fewer jumps into killer thunderstorms that "just popped up out of nowhere".

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[DigitalDave 0]

Quote

I thought about that and might change it later. I live in the St. Louis area, so I am always going between Illinois and Missouri, so it is actually fewer clicks to leave multiple states on the screen. 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Thanks for the comments.

Good point. I hadn't considered that. I'm a programmer, so feature-creep is in my nature.

[PhreeZone 20]

Its not quite as easy as what you created but I have found that http://mesowest.utah.edu provides Current METAR weather for all reporting stations in a state if you select the Current Conditions option and what I find useful is that it retains the last 24 hours worth of weather so you can see if the winds are picking up, ceiling is coming down or even just has a record if needed for an incident.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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PhreeZone

Its not quite as easy as what you created but I have found that http://mesowest.utah.edu provides Current METAR weather for all reporting stations in a state if you select the Current Conditions option and what I find useful is that it retains the last 24 hours worth of weather so you can see if the winds are picking up, ceiling is coming down or even just has a record if needed for an incident.

Yes, METAR information is available historically too. I just chose to provide the most current translated report so people could quickly see what the weather is like at the DZ or other place right now.

By the way, anyone that is interested can go here and have at a lot of data: http://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/

[kallend 2,106]

peek

***Its not quite as easy as what you created but I have found that http://mesowest.utah.edu provides Current METAR weather for all reporting stations in a state if you select the Current Conditions option and what I find useful is that it retains the last 24 hours worth of weather so you can see if the winds are picking up, ceiling is coming down or even just has a record if needed for an incident.

Yes, METAR information is available historically too. I just chose to provide the most current translated report so people could quickly see what the weather is like at the DZ or other place right now.

By the way, anyone that is interested can go here and have at a lot of data: http://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/

Convective SIGMETS might be worthwhile too.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[sky12345 0]

i dont get it

why not just make a single page with all links harcoded? e.g

Alabama:
KEET - Alabaster
...and so on for all states and stations

why make 4 clicks instead of 1?

jsut to say "i made a program"?

[Dean358 0]

Here's a great aviation weather app that gives you METARS, TAFs, Winds Aloft and a bunch of other stuff very easily readable on your phone:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airwx-aviation-weather/id284625154?mt=8

Downside is at $15 (used to be $10) it's a bit pricey for an app.

www.wci.nyc

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sky12345

why not just make a single page with all links harcoded? e.g
Alabama:
KEET - Alabaster
...and so on for all states and stations

I could have done that. But if the NWS changes the options on the METAR page, all the links would need to change. It was a compromize. That would be a lot of links on one page too. 50 pulldown menus is enough already.

The idea is for you to bookmark your favorites and not need to go back to the program. That is what I did on my personal weather page, but then I wanted more, and figured other people would too.

[theonlyski 8]

peek

***why not just make a single page with all links harcoded? e.g
Alabama:
KEET - Alabaster
...and so on for all states and stations

I could have done that. But if the NWS changes the options on the METAR page, all the links would need to change. It was a compromize. That would be a lot of links on one page too. 50 pulldown menus is enough already.

The idea is for you to bookmark your favorites and not need to go back to the program. That is what I did on my personal weather page, but then I wanted more, and figured other people would too.

Not knocking on you at all, but you could probably script it so it just takes changing one link in the source to update all of the links. Would be less coding too!

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

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theonlyski

... you could probably script it so it just takes changing one link in the source to update all of the links. Would be less coding too!

On the to-do list, back-burner for now.

[LyraM45 0]

kallend

******Its not quite as easy as what you created but I have found that http://mesowest.utah.edu provides Current METAR weather for all reporting stations in a state if you select the Current Conditions option and what I find useful is that it retains the last 24 hours worth of weather so you can see if the winds are picking up, ceiling is coming down or even just has a record if needed for an incident.

Yes, METAR information is available historically too. I just chose to provide the most current translated report so people could quickly see what the weather is like at the DZ or other place right now.

By the way, anyone that is interested can go here and have at a lot of data: http://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/

Convective SIGMETS might be worthwhile too.

We have a lot of this information streamlined through the CWSU website, which was my boss's brain child out of our office here at Oakland Center. People tend to like pretty pictures, which we have a lot of
We basically tap into mesowest and coded a very user friendly display that allows you to mouse over current obs, as well as click on a station to get previous obs, raw obs/metars, as well as some forecast and satellite data for that particular spot.


http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/zoa/mwmap2.php?map=zoa&wfo=&plot=0&limit=1

That's just a link to the national map. You can click on whatever area you are interested and go from there.

My offices page: weather.gov/zoa

Apologies for the spelling (and grammar).... I got a B.S, not a B.A. :)

[NorrinRadd 0]

peek

I wrote an online program to access translated METARs via pull-down menus, which should make it easier to find the airport/reporting station of interest. It is "Translated US METARs for Drop Zones"

(It provides a somewhat easier method of accessing the METARs because the National Weather Service page requires that you know the identifier for the airport/reporting station. It also defaults to a translated report.)

It can be found at http://www.pcprg.com/programs.htm

Note that some reporting stations may not always have data available (for various reasons).

Also note that the reason I wrote it with an intermediate link is that so the request is made from your server, not ours.

For the other program I wrote a while back, "US Winds Aloft Forecast for Drop Zones" the request needs to go through our server, and although I tell people not to try to automate it because Winds Aloft data changes only every 6 hours, people still use it more often than needed.

It is just incredible now days how much weather information is available online. It will be worth your time to look around the National Weather Service web site and resources. It is pretty hard to not know what the weather is doing any more, (at least the current weather).

Neat!

Why drive myself crazy trying to be normal, when I am already at crazy?