
OpenWeatherMap - aaronbrethorst
http://openweathermap.org/
======
brudgers
In the US, National Weather Service is free and ad free and has a staff of top
notch meteorologists.

[http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.267153&lon=-...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.267153&lon=-97.74306079999996&site=all&smap=1&searchresult=Austin%2C%20TX%2C%20USA)

I am a huge fan the hourly weather graph:

[http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.26715&lon=-9...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.26715&lon=-97.74306079999996&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical)

Also available in tabular format for your parsing pleasure:

[http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.26715&lon=-9...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=30.26715&lon=-97.74306079999996&lg=english&&FcstType=digital)

~~~
kybernetyk
I really envy you guys. I'm somewhat of a weather enthusiast and here in
Germany the (tax funded) Wetterdienst [0] makes only out-of-date low
resolution weather data freely available.

There are better systems like webKonrad [1] (live radar data down to city
level, etc) available but as a common citizen you can't even get paid access.
Access is reserved to the fire department, etc.

Funnily though there was a little f*ck up in the webKonrad app and they had
hard coded credentials to a developer test account in the app. With a little
reverse engineering we had free access to this pretty cool tool for a few
months.

IMHO it's pretty sad that they fund the whole German Wetterdienst operation
with taxes and citizens have no access to the full data.

[0] - [http://www.dwd.de](http://www.dwd.de)

[1] - [http://webkonrad.dwd.de](http://webkonrad.dwd.de)

~~~
rorrr2
Have you considered suing for access?

~~~
kybernetyk
I thought about it but decided that it would be too much effort and too costly
for just a hobby of mine.

So I contacted the german Pirate Party about the issue. (About that and german
air space maps which, too, are not freely accessible while being produced with
tax money).

I assumed this issue would be a great fit for the PP's agenda. But I guess
they have more important things to do (like wasting time with arguing about
childish bullshit).

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wyclif
I suspect the landing page text was not written by a native English-speaker.
I'd suggest an edit and giving it a professional once-over.

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ddeck
The popular weather aggregating websites generally do a poor job outside of
the US. Presumably because they rely on a global weather data source rather
than the country-specific agencies.

When travelling, I typically reference the World Meteorological Organization's
site to find the official forecasts:

[http://worldweather.wmo.int/](http://worldweather.wmo.int/)

They list official observations, forecasts, and climate data for ~1700 cities
worldwide in numerous languages and provide the link to the respective
official local national weather service for each country.

And if you live in a typhoon/hurricane susceptible region as I do, their
severe weather website aggregates official tracking estimates and forecasts
from a multitude of weather services:

[http://severe.worldweather.org/](http://severe.worldweather.org/)

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dfc
Like another commenter I am curious about where the data comes from. The
occasional blinking dot on a map does not provide a lot of information about
how they amassed the data from 40,000 weather stations. When I did not see a
lot of details it occurred to me that they might be acting as a middleman for
Weather underground's API. However Weather Underground _claims_ to have the
most weather stations and they list a lower bound of 25,000 weather
stations.[1]

[1]
[http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/about.asp](http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/about.asp)

~~~
est
They use public airport weather data

~~~
pellias
Yup, when i zoomed in to see the station information, all of them are
airports.

~~~
dfc
The numbers do not add up. According to the CIA in 2012 there were 43,794
airports or airfields that are recognizable from the air. This number includes
airfields that are "unpaved (grass, earth, sand, or gravel surfaces) and may
include closed or abandoned installations." The 2010 figure is 43,982.[2][3]

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/fields/2053.html)

[2]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20120208135324/https://www.cia.go...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120208135324/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications//the-
world-factbook/fields/2053.html)

[3] I found this to be interesting: Afghanistan lost an airport/airfield over
those two years.

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ancarda
There doesn't seem to be any indication of usage limits on the API or a
pricing structure (i.e free is 500 hits/hr). Free APIs are cool but expensive
to run. Where is the money coming from to fund this service?

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thezach
looks kinda cool... I do a lot of weather scraping (
[http://warningweather.com](http://warningweather.com) ) and have actually
just secured a direct connection to AWIPS (the national weather service's
computer system).

I really love the idea of you service and will sign up for it tomorrow for
some future projects. My biggest concern is your data being contaminated by
home weather stations.... those stations tend to be pretty wack and can just
really mess up your data set.

~~~
dfc
What does securing a direct connection to AWIPS entail? Sounds neat.

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corford
I don't know much about this stuff but I love the idea of contributing data.

Can anyone with a bit more clue tell me if something along the lines of a
DVB-T Stick (great for contributing local ADS-B data to fr24.com) exists in
the meterological world?

Basically a cheap (< €150) setup that would let me capture some simple data
(temp, windspeed, humidity) and get it into a raspi (or similar)?

~~~
dfc
Check out the list of personal weather station vendors at weather
underground[1]. I am not sure about the price but I think I would have
remembered if the prices were over your budget.

[1]
[http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/setup.asp#hardwar...](http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/setup.asp#hardware)

~~~
corford
Thanks!

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fs111
I played with this a few weeks ago and made a little python thingy, that
prints the weather based on geoip: [https://github.com/fs111/geoip-
weather](https://github.com/fs111/geoip-weather)

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DigitalSea
In Australia access to a free weather API is scarce. I've had to resort to
writing scraping scripts in the past, hopefully OpenWeatherMap means I don't
have to scrape sites any more and have access to a nice free API.

~~~
jpatokal
[http://www.bom.gov.au/catalogue/data-
feeds.shtml](http://www.bom.gov.au/catalogue/data-feeds.shtml) ?

~~~
DigitalSea
I didn't actually know this existed, but even looking at this page yields a
dissatisfying result. The feeds look like they don't provide nearly as much
information and the confusing and archaic feed formats as well. What is wrong
with a straight up JSON api?

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wensing
This is excellent. Hi from Stormpulse; welcome to the weather fold.

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positr0n
Neat service. I have a typo to report: If you try to create an account that
already exists, it says "name alredy exist."

~~~
paul_f
That seems a better way to spell that word anyway. Let's start a campaign to
eliminate unpronounced characters from the English language. Who's with me?!

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jpatokal
This looks epic, but is awfully scant on details: eg. where the worldwide
precipitation data coming from, and how current is it?

~~~
zalew
It's written on the frontpage "Weather data is recieved from global
meterological broadcast services and more than 40 000 weather stations."
[http://openweathermap.org/sys](http://openweathermap.org/sys)

~~~
dfc
I came here to ask the same question and I saw the 40k number you mention and
I visited the page you link to. The occassional blinking light on a google map
does not really answer the question of how they accumulated data from 40,000
weather stations.

I got the following error when I tried the layer station link[1]:

    
    
      ×Ошибка 404 (depricated function, see more http://openweathermap.org/wiki/API/JSON_API)
    

Ошибка is russian for error/mistake.

[1] [http://openweathermap.org/layer-station](http://openweathermap.org/layer-
station)

~~~
zalew
there is an upload api
[http://openweathermap.org/stations](http://openweathermap.org/stations) so I
guess they scrap/connect 'global meterological broadcast services' and invite
stations to submit their data.

~~~
dfc
I do not like guessing. Trust, verify yada yada.

Given the alternatives, NOAA (my preferred source but obviously american-
centric) or WeatherUnderground I see no reason to use a service I need to make
guesses about.

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taternuts
I'm signed up in the hopes that I'll get grandfathered into better rates when
you scale

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tunnuz
This is amazing, I've been waiting for this.

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pletisan
password field is clean ?

