Topic: New Marquette MI weather site

[openvista]

Introducing: http://marquetteweather.com

It's a work in progress, of course. But I've built a custom, responsive (mobile-friendly) site using data from WeatherCat. Runs off a Hackintosh server.

It pulls in alerts from the local NWS WFO as well as other CWOP stations via XML. 

Small footprint and runs fast except for the XML calls. I may end up caching those so I don't have to wait for other servers for my site to load.

My day job is web administrator so I like to roll my own. You can tell which side of the developer/designer spectrum I fall on when you look at it.  I like to keep it simple!

[Jáchym]

very nice

[cospringswx]

Looks good.

[Skyview]

I like seeing sites that are different.

[miraculon]

I am curious about your snow depth and snowfall measurements. Is this manually entered from a measurement that you make, something pulled in from the web, or some type of equipment?

Greg H.

[openvista]

I am curious about your snow depth and snowfall measurements. Is this manually entered from a measurement that you make, something pulled in from the web, or some type of equipment?

Greg H.

It will be manually entered. I'll use a snow board to collect and measure snow. I've also got a snow measuring stick to measure overall depth.

Boy do you I wish there was a way to automate that process! We got an average of 100-125in (250-320cm) in town here. Just outside of town, they can easily get 200-300 inches of snow depending on where you are in relation to Lake Superior. 

[Jáchym]

http://www.howmuchsnow.com/snow/

[miraculon]

I am curious about your snow depth and snowfall measurements. Is this manually entered from a measurement that you make, something pulled in from the web, or some type of equipment?

Greg H.

It will be manually entered. I'll use a snow board to collect and measure snow. I've also got a snow measuring stick to measure overall depth.

Boy do you I wish there was a way to automate that process! We got an average of 100-125in (250-320cm) in town here. Just outside of town, they can easily get 200-300 inches of snow depending on where you are in relation to Lake Superior.

I am using a MaxBotix rangefinder with some custom scripts on my Linux box.

http://rogerscityweather.com/snow.php

It has been a learning experience, I just made some improvements with a new expanded PVC snowboard.

I haven't added this page back to my menu since it is not "snow season" yet and I wanted some time to evaluate the new configuration. Basically, the rangefinder measures the distance to the snowboard. The scripts subtract the reading from the zero-depth reference value. It is kind of a work in progress.

Greg H.

[openvista]

I am using a MaxBotix rangefinder with some custom scripts on my Linux box.

http://rogerscityweather.com/snow.php

It has been a learning experience, I just made some improvements with a new expanded PVC snowboard.

My biggest challenge is that all these snow sensors, aside from not really being in the "robust" category yet, are wired. My site is on my second city lot. I'd have to either go under my driveway or around my garage and under a sidewalk with a long cable run and then attempt to get it through the rubble foundation in a 100 year old house and up into the 1st floor location where my computer is. The main appeal of the Davis Vantage Pro2 is that it's wireless and has a long range. I'm not aware of any wireless snow sensors.

In any event, from what I've seen, the automated sensors only measure snow depth not snowfall in a set period of time (like 6 hours).

Thank you to everyone for making suggestions though.

In fact, miraculon, I've been looking for a way to get that NOAA interactive snow map onto my site. I used the example on your site for inspiration. I've built a prototype here: http://mqtweather.com/snow.php. Thanks!

[Jáchym]

I guess there probably are some solutions how to connect it wirelessly, or even measure the snowfall (heated "rain" gauge in addition to normal rain gauge), but...

It is probably still easier to do manually, first of all I think it is more accurate and second, the wireless solution and snow fall measuring would probably require quite a hefty budget.... And maybe it is nice to still stay at least a little bit "in contact" with the weather in today´s wireless automated world

[wxman1952]

Hello fellow Michigander. Welcome aboard. Looks like big changes coming for the weekend. Nice site you have.
Mike

[chief-david]

Hi from Minneapolis.   I have been in the Tilden Mine.

[weather34]

Introducing: http://mqtweather.com

It's a work in progress, of course. But I've built a custom, responsive (mobile-friendly) site using data from WeatherCat. Runs off a Hackintosh server.

It pulls in alerts from the local NWS WFO as well as other CWOP stations via XML. 

Small footprint and runs fast except for the XML calls. I may end up caching those so I don't have to wait for other servers for my site to load.

My day job is web administrator so I like to roll my own. You can tell which side of the developer/designer spectrum I fall on when you look at it.  I like to keep it simple!

love it a breath of fresh design approach . well done

[tbrasel]

Very nice...I like it.

[openvista]

I've made some enhancements to the site since launching it. Plus there was a domain change to: http://marquetteweather.com (previously it was mqtweather.com).

Temp, wind chill, humidity and rain are pushed out every 60 seconds now via AJAX. This means the user does not have to refresh their browser and those parameters are updated automatically -- just like on wunderground.

I made a caching script for the forecast pulls from the NWS. I have the script execute every 15 minutes to check for an updated forecast. If one exists, it's downloads it and saves the file. The file is used for the short-term and long-term forecasts. It speeds up the site significantly and prevents the NWS server from getting bombed with requests when and if my site gets busy.

Also I have entered climactic data for the city (records/normals) into a database and serve them as part of the almanac section of the home page. This adds quite a bit of value to the site as you cannot find this information anywhere else but buried in a PDF on the local NWS site.

[CNYWeather]

Looking good. Nice to see a different looking site.

How long till your Lake Effect starts up there? I'm on the other end of it off Lake Ontario.

[openvista]

Thanks, CNYWeather! 

We had some snow mid October, about 3 inches. But it wasn't lake effect per se.  Ya never know when it will start but I painted my new snowboard today just to be ready.  November is usually the month we get our first real storm.

[wxman1952]

Hello fellow Michigander. Nice website. I placed it in my favorites. I'm "down below" here in Saginaw. lol. Looks like a very interesting week ahead. Meanwhile, I've been working on my November "tan" the last 2 days. smh lol
Mike