InstantWeatherMaps Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 App available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch! Check post 61 for details Introducing InstantWeatherMaps.com, a new weather model website. The site has a lag (from when the raw data appears on the NCEP FTP server) of 1-20 seconds, compared to around 100 seconds for the closest other free site (the new NCEP site). I offer over 150 variables, including Kuchera-method snowfall (otherwise only found on Earl Barker's site, which has a lag of around 30-90 minutes). Over 4 million GFS, NAM, RUC, and ECMWF model maps are on my server at any given time. I would appreciate any suggestions as to future enhancements I could make to my site. http://www.instantweathermaps.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LVblizzard Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Wow, this is a really great site. It would be nice if you could add some other models, but I love how interactive the features are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DopplerWx Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Great site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellinwood Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Maps and forecast archive are nice... where's the looping/scrolling capability? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CooL Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Very Cool. Bookmarked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ineedsnow Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 nice!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
28storms Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Nice! More tropical sector maps would be nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quakertown needs snow Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 nice but i was also wondering this Maps and forecast archive are nice... where's the looping/scrolling capability? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KokomoWX Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Then two meter temps and dew points in Fahrenheit would be better. Precip in inches too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NHLChase54 Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I'm about too bookmark...thanks for being free!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadgerWXman Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I hate to critique a free site but I imagine that's what OP wants... - Definitely need some kind of looping/scrolling capability - Needs more models Lots of data available for the one model on there, but if you want more people to use it, it's gotta become more user friendly and include more models. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
okie333 Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Great site; I will be using this exclusively for GFS maps from now on (unless I need something your site doesn't have). It needs more models though... sure the GFS is the most-viewed model, but the NAM comes pretty darn close, and of course the RUC and HRRR would be good to add for those situations when updates every 6 hours are not enough. Any chance you will be getting individual member GEFS and SREF maps anytime soon? I would LOVE to see Kuchera on those! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted June 30, 2011 Author Share Posted June 30, 2011 Then two meter temps and dew points in Fahrenheit would be better. Precip in inches too. Those are already available under "Single-Variable FPS-System". I hate to critique a free site but I imagine that's what OP wants... - Definitely need some kind of looping/scrolling capability - Needs more models Lots of data available for the one model on there, but if you want more people to use it, it's gotta become more user friendly and include more models. I will probably be adding more models in the next few weeks or so, and I hope to make loops available in time for winter. Great site; I will be using this exclusively for GFS maps from now on (unless I need something your site doesn't have). It needs more models though... sure the GFS is the most-viewed model, but the NAM comes pretty darn close, and of course the RUC and HRRR would be good to add for those situations when updates every 6 hours are not enough. Any chance you will be getting individual member GEFS and SREF maps anytime soon? I would LOVE to see Kuchera on those! I hope to eventually have all of those... and yes, Kuchera maps will be available for every model that outputs the necessary parameters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted June 30, 2011 Author Share Posted June 30, 2011 Here's one little thing I found... Here's the discription for Lifted Index: Lifted index is a measurement of the stability of an air mass at a given moment. Positive values denote stable air masses, and negative values denote unstable air masses. Negative values are an indication that strong thunderstorms may occur in the area. On our weather maps, lifted index is given in kelvins. but the scale you use looks like a Celsius scale...not to mention I'm pretty sure you can't have negative values in kelvins The lifted index is a difference between two temperatures, so essentially Kelvins and degrees Celsius are the same thing, and yes, it can be negative (for example, 300K - 305K is -5K). I call them Kelvins instead of degrees Celsius because that is the terminology that GrADS gives me in the .ctl files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Lizard Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Here's one little thing I found... Here's the discription for Lifted Index: Lifted index is a measurement of the stability of an air mass at a given moment. Positive values denote stable air masses, and negative values denote unstable air masses. Negative values are an indication that strong thunderstorms may occur in the area. On our weather maps, lifted index is given in kelvins. but the scale you use looks like a Celsius scale...not to mention I'm pretty sure you can't have negative values in kelvins Oh dear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hm8 Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 K yeah I'm just ignorant. Nevermind..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil882 Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 One thing I like about the site is that it shows what hour the GFS is on while the new data is coming in... besides that I agree with the others that there needs to be a good looping either by flash or java. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted June 30, 2011 Author Share Posted June 30, 2011 In response to your comments, I've added Previous and Next links to the map display pages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baroclinic_instability Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 In response to your comments, I've added Previous and Next links to the map display pages. I like the ability to choose different pressure surfaces under the "Upper Air" section, but is there a way you can just combine the heights/vorticity? It just isn't right to look at vorticity alone with no heights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baroclinic_instability Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 Another thing--it would be nice to have a larger domain that covers North America like Twisterdata.com as it would be great to see systems dropping in from Canada, the air masses up there, etc. Otherwise nice job for a free site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCHurricane Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Very cool. Thanks for the time and effort on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcwxguy Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 nice for free site, thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeatMiser Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Great site! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Just now corrected a major error that was causing some of the navigation options to be obscured. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
okie333 Posted July 2, 2011 Share Posted July 2, 2011 Just now corrected a major error that was causing some of the navigation options to be obscured. I was wondering why I couldn't find most of the maps... I had just figured that they were to be added in the near future. Thanks, and great site (the Previous and Next buttons are a great touch)! Still, more models would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted July 4, 2011 Author Share Posted July 4, 2011 I was wondering why I couldn't find most of the maps... I had just figured that they were to be added in the near future. Thanks, and great site (the Previous and Next buttons are a great touch)! Still, more models would be appreciated. I'm working on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted July 14, 2011 Author Share Posted July 14, 2011 Added vertical velocity (omega) maps (in the Upper Air category, starting with today's 18Z run). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted July 17, 2011 Author Share Posted July 17, 2011 Just added image share links using Imageshack, so you can now share maps directly on forums and other websites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wxmanmitch Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Nice job...I built a site of my own a while back featuring NAM and GFS output. I need to take up PHP to make it more interactive at some point and add more models. I have a current weather page as well, but it's kind of rudimentary. Like my site, it looks like you use GrADS for the model graphics. GrADS is nice since it doesn't have much of a learning curve and is easy to install and use on a web server, unlike GEMPAK which requires many dependencies, is cumbersome, and is a b**** to install. GrADS also generates images much faster than GEMPAK I've noticed. Although I'd like to add more models to my site, I'm on a shared server due to costs and am only allowed to a small number of cron jobbed scripts simultaneously, something that creating more model graphics would require. I tried to get my scripts to fetch the grib files within seconds of coming up on the NCEP servers, but the timing varies slightly from run to run. As such, if the grib files came out a few minutes later than usual, my scripts would fail. As such, I had to cron my scripts to fetch the gribs about 5 minutes later than the average time the file becomes available on NCEP's server. I tried to create regional model graphics on my site to make it a little more unique. As for the looping stuff, I found some javascript code on another site, which you're free to copy and paste if you'd like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InstantWeatherMaps Posted July 23, 2011 Author Share Posted July 23, 2011 Made maps generate faster... first map now has 2 sec lag, last map under 15 sec most of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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