29 Comments
- DenDen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Those of us who live in places prone to bad weather have known this for a long time.
- luckyschop, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"experimental"
FINALLY another word besides "BETA" - escheppa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This is old news they have been doing this for at least a year if not more. Although it is cool.
- enderwig, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The ForcastFox plugin for firefox will show you any watches and warnings that pertain to your zip code. You just click on the alert icon that shows up next to your radar.
- quanta88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3RSS is just a specially formatted XML file that is periodically updated with data sorted in chronological order. They use XML instead of plain text or HTML because it's more compact and flexible. An RSS file typically groups the data as a "title" (i.e. a news headline), a "link" (hyperlink to the website with the newstory), and a "description" (some sort of text summary).
The XML file is formatted in a way that anyone can build a website or program to read the file and output it in their own customized layout. Such websites/programs are called "RSS readers" or "RSS aggregators". - xeeton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I made a formal request that the NWS do this for their products in 2003. Their system for aggregating weather information was completely disorganized and difficult to parse.
- pimpsallad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yea, unfortunately I add their hurricane feeds whenever on is coming my way
- acceptab1euname, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I tried using their RSS feed about a year ago, it doesn't seem to work with Thunderbird's reader, at least. It'd download one report, and then never do it again. Very odd...I hope it actually works this time around!
- DrAegoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Check out http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/
It's put out by the Southern Region Headquarters, but seems to have info for the whole country. - clumsyninja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There's also http://www.rssweather.com
They seem to have more local coverage down to the county/city level. - achnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wikipedia has all the information you need... RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
You could fulfill the purpose of the RSS file format with HTML or a text file, but the whole point is to have a standard. Especially since you are grabbing the information from several different aggregators. Aggregators are programs that grab the content that the RSS file points to. Without a standard (RSS) you'd have a million different formats that do one thing. You also get the benefits of what it's based on: XML. - baudelaire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The Live Bookmark is in my Toolbar right now. Very handy. Its tornado season here in the Midwest.
- muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not exactly the same though, they would want to pull it off for other reasons other than technical.
Beta usually means it's not completely tested to its full features. - dystopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not only alerts: you can get hourly observations in XML/RSS from NOAA as well. Been using them to show conditions at our local airport:
http://www.weather.gov/rss/ - chapium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1RSS is just a handy way to pick up news posts without going to the main page of a website. There are several RSS readers out there, but the only one that has made sense for me was the sage extension for Firefox. With it I can scan Digg, BBC, Slashdot, etc quickly without all the clutter on their respective pages.
Be sure and check it out: http://sage.mozdev.org/blog/
Thunderbird, Opera, and IE7 also have RSS reading capabilities. Sage seems most like IE7's which in my opinion is quite nice. - cylitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You can still get the zone forecasts for now though a site like http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/textversion/states.html. The trouble is that there is a push to get rid of the those forecasts and only use the graphical point forecasts.
- foodbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This site has been using it forever too:
http://www.butterfat.net/weather/ - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Is it getting close to hurricane season again. uggghhh.
- lesliewong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I use the NWS RSS feed on an HTML page on my website with Feed2JS (http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=download) to display local weather conditions.
- kb9vgr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1storm spotting is the term we use when we are not being dumb
- CVQuesty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Forecasting from The Weather Channel tends to be a little more accurate, having done a significant amount of aggregation on the backend for you from WSI, The National Weather Service, NOAA, and a few that can't be mentioned here. (I work there).
RSS: http://www.weather.com/weather/rss/subscription?from=footer&ref=/ - geofffox, on 10/12/2007, -10/+9I have been using these, plus their RSS feeds of hourly surface observations and info from the Hurricane Center for around a year on my website: http://www.geofffox.com. Look in the right hand column. Very effective.
- nroose, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I wish they would put all of their products in RSS or at least in text form. I would like to be able to get the text weather report for the San Francisco Bay, but it seems as though I can only get it with a whole bunch of graphics around it (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/marine.php?marine=pzz530), which is no good for my phone.
- Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1All this weather talk makes me want to go storm chasing!
- rolypolyman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1What the hell is RSS? Not that I haven't heard of it before but I can't find a decent explanation of what it is... Wikipedia just talks about the history and tosses around some Internet slang. If it's Web based, what's wrong with HTML or a text flatfile / table?
- xpose, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Yeah, I've been using these rss feeds as well. I use the rss feeds to decide whether or not it is a "good" beach day for this upcoming summer season. Yes, too much time on my hands indeed. http://www.x-pose.org
- MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -8/+1This is stupid, it's just text information. I want pictures and videos of the weather, they're so much more effective.
- bryanl, on 10/12/2007, -16/+6You assume I use firefox. I enjoy having a choice of what web browser I use.


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