
National Weather Service will stop using all caps in its forecasts - aaronbrethorst
http://www.noaa.gov/national-weather-service-will-stop-using-all-caps-its-forecasts
======
samcheng
There's a reason their weather forecasts were in ALL CAPS. After all, they've
been transmitting weather forecasts and data electronically since before the
(US) Civil War! They predate ASCII by over 100 years...

[http://www.weather.gov/timeline](http://www.weather.gov/timeline)

If you ever want an inside look into the weather, and can put up with some
meteorology jargon and ALL CAPS, the forecast discussions are quite
interesting! Here's one for San Francisco, discussing the light rain maybe
coming Wednesday night:

[http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=mt...](http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=mtr&product=AFD&format=CI&glossary=1)

If you read these, and then watch the local TV weatherman, you'll notice some
of the same language - the weather announcers read these, too!

------
hiopilit
I was a youth volunteer at the NWS office in Spokane, WA circa ~1990+. I
remember typing out the messages onto the terminals that were given to me by
the team there. It was always caps.

But, in cool ways, the main terminals all had track balls, using a can opener
to open up the cans before we put them onto balloons, and recording the actual
NWS broadcasts myself are some of the great memories.

I became a pilot and use their forecast data all the time. I was given a WWII
original E6B style device by one of the guys there which I hold onto with it's
leather case.

Lots of respect for those people who day in and day out take measurements on
the ground/air all around the country and world. The Internet provides it to
us assuming it's just a given fact, but, it's taken huge number of individuals
to produce weather data.

------
awinter-py
Just don't change the voice on the weather radio. I don't know how they pack 5
syllables into 'coastal w-aters' but we won't get our money's worth with less.

~~~
samcheng
Or reading "CLOUDY" with an emphasis on the "OW" \- for every day in the
forecast (when living in Seattle...)

I guess his name is "Tom"

[http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/newvoice.html](http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/newvoice.html)

~~~
awinter-py
once you name them you can never get rid of them

------
upofadown
>this holdover was carried into modern times since some customers still used
the old equipment.

Even ASCII mechanical teletype printers will map lower case to upper case.
They just have to ignore a bit. Five level codes have no distinction between
upper and lower case.

I think the real reason is just the convention caused by the fact that the
printers produced upper case. People get to the point where they see the
complete words/abbreviations as thoughts. It's really just a complicated
shape. Since everyone will have to learn the new shapes I predict there will
actually be some complaining about the change.

Oh, and upper case letters are larger and more distinct. Some people are now
going to have to hunt up their reading glasses and/or change their font size.

Considering how simple the concepts are, it might make sense to skip the
intermediate representation and just define some Unicode pictographs...

