

Using Weather Data to Determine Your Perfect Vacation Destination - rishi
http://anishshah.net/post/1531587653/theres-always-a-better-way

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brc
This is a good idea in principle but hampered by lack of usable data.

For one thing, average temperature is not much use for a holiday. Places that
are weather dependent (tropical islands, beach holidays, ski holidays)
generally will have the right temperature at the time of year you're thinking
of going, but the actual experience of the trip is less temperature related
than precipitation and wind related. A holiday on a tropical island with 5
days of rain is miserable even if it's warm. A skiing holiday with a blizzard
isn't much fun, and being on a cloudy beach is only half as much fun as being
on a sunny one.

Unless you could mine a probability of sunshine in a reasonable forecast
period - and this depends on your travel timeframe - the data is always going
to be problematic. That's not a slight on the author, it's a problem inherent
in weather prediction. And lets face it, some of the biggest computing power
in the world goes into weather prediction.

The cynic in me says you can get just as much information on potential
destinations just looking at a globe and picking a hemisphere / latitude based
on time of year, and gridding down to a set of locations that way.

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moontear
I totally agree with you.

Whilst the basic notion that travel sites could do a better job at giving you
suggestions based on your preferences - and temperature definitely being one
factor - temperature is not everything.

The author did a nice job collecting all the temperature information, but for
an end user the simple names of the destinations don't mean much (where
exactly is "Metehara" without asking Google?). I wouldn't find myself just
looking for a temperature and in accordance to that look for destinations.
Much more important for a holiday is the price range, so if I'd use the Excel
file to find my perfect destination I would still have to find all the prices
associated with the destinations (e.g. traveling to Ethiopia / Metehara will
be quite expensive).

All in all: Good start. Incorporate this data within a larger travel search
engine and let the user have one more option to narrow down the search.

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anish2424
I'm thinking of making all the locations that get outputted hyperlinked to
Google Maps. What I'd really like is for the outputted list of destinations to
be outputted onto Google Maps as pin drops - but I couldn't find any help on
how to do that online. Any ideas?

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pyre
I'm curious why the Department of Energy has weather data. I thought that the
NOAA was the 'weather agency.'

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interknot
The data in question appears to be simulated and intended for use in
developing energy calculations for buildings:

[http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/weatherdat...](http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/weatherdata_sources.cfm)

That said, DOE is probably keenly interested in gathering reliable weather
data so that they can keep the power grid working.

