[GLLUG] Weather-info options

[Ben Holcomb]

I have to second Weather.gov. There isn't a lot of Linux-based weather 
software. I use Gkrell-weather plugin to get a current temp/relative 
humidity. The rest of the 'decent' weather programs are all Windows based.

Gibson Ridge makes some awesome software http://www.grlevelx.com/
Storm Lab from Interwarn is also pretty decent as best I can tell 
http://www.interwarn.com/

Another resource I use a lot is the College of DuPage weather pages at 
http://kamala.cod.edu/

Of course, the Weather Service also has their own set of XML feeds, so 
theoretically you could develop an application to take advantage of 
those feeds.

Charles Ulrich wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Michael Rudas <audiotech50 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is mostly for our North American-based list members.
>>
>>  Severe weather is a concern this time of year.  For years, I have been
>>  using the advertising-supported WeatherBug and an ad-free alternative,
>>  Weather Pulse under Microsoft Windows -- but was not aware of
>>  alternatives under Linux, so I decided to take a look at The Weather
>>  Channel and AccuWeather.
>>
>>  Of course, you can always go to their respective websites to view
>>  current conditions:
>>  <http://www.weatherbug.com>
>>  <http://www.accuweather.com>
>>  <http://www.weather.com>
>>  but that's a bit of a hassle.
>>
>>  Fortunately, The Weather Channel and AccuWeather both provide free
>>  downloads and services.  For those of us that run Linux or Mac OS X,
>>  both services provide Firefox extensions.  Since Firefox extensions
>>  are OS-agnostic, they run fine in any environment that supports
>>  Firefox. Both also offer a variety of toolbars and widgets for a
>>  variety of environments.
>>  <http://www.accuweather.com/downloadcenter.asp>
>>  <http://www.weather.com/services/downloads/index.html>
> 
> I'm a rather big fan of http://weather.gov. It's ad-free, uncluttered,
> and a lot less "dumbed down" than commercial sites. They're the ones
> that provide a lot of raw data to the commercial weather sites, so
> you're getting the info straight from the horse's mouth. Every time I
> get bored and go browsing around weather.gov and related sites, I
> always end up finding something cool.
> 
> I'm not a big fan of AccuWeather, by the way. In 2005, they sponsored
> (through Senator Rick Santorum) a bill that would prohibit the
> National Weather Service (NWS) from being able to provide its weather
> data directly to the public. With this legislation, you'd have to pay
> for your weather updates _twice_. Once to get the data collected in
> the first place through a tax-funded government agency and then again
> to a company that merely formats the data on nice colorful web pages.
> It would also mean the end of free applications that grab weather data
> directly from the NWS website or servers. Thankfully, the bill got
> zero support and died quietly.
> 
> I'm a litle dismayed though that there do not appear to be any Firefox
> extensions that make use of the weather.gov data. The GNOME Weather
> Report Applet says that it gets its information from a variety of
> sources including the NWS.
> 
> Charles
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-- 
Ben Holcomb WX8BEN
http://www.wx8ben.com
http://www.bholcomb.com