WU Radblast (NEXRAD output) gone for good?

[WolfStock1]

Query from a Wx enthusiast-but-not-professional - 

I brought this up last year when the NEXRAD feed showed up as "down for maintenance" on the Weather Underground site.   It came back for a while but then went down again, and has been showing up as "down for maintenance" ever since then - 17 months ago.  Is the NEXRAD radar radblast thing gone, as something directly-accessible on web page?

I had some handy links to custom frames that pulled in the radar from the wunderground site, and loved that, but surprisingly for a popular website it's still there but still showing "down for maintenance" as of 3/2022.  

I bought the RadarScope app on phone - that's pretty good, though is a bit more heavyweight and klunky, and I'm not sure if is actually the nexrad radar, and it's also not as flexible in the options for display (e.g. Rain/Snow checkbox).   There is a decent site done by College of DuPage as well - also a bit klunky, and seems odd that one would have to use a small college website to get to that.   Might there be something on a NOAA/NWS site, or major commercial site, that has it?

Thanks for any info.

 

[Kmlwx]

If you are just looking for basic radar - use the NWS LWX site and it is on there. Though you won't have a lot of options for different product types. Radarscope is best-in-class for mobile and if you are a higher end enthusiast you could also get GR2 or GR3 products on PC. 

NEXRAD is not a term specific to Wunderground - it's just what WSR-88D was referred to (is?)

[Stormpc]

7 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

Query from a Wx enthusiast-but-not-professional - 

I brought this up last year when the NEXRAD feed showed up as "down for maintenance" on the Weather Underground site.   It came back for a while but then went down again, and has been showing up as "down for maintenance" ever since then - 17 months ago.  Is the NEXRAD radar gone, as something directly-accessible on web page?

I had some handy links to custom frames that pulled in the radar from the wunderground site, and loved that, but surprisingly for a popular website it's still there but still showing "down for maintenance" as of 3/2022.  

I bought the RadarScope app on phone - that's pretty good, though is a bit more heavyweight and klunky, and I'm not sure if is actually the nexrad radar, and it's also not as flexible in the options for display (e.g. Rain/Snow checkbox).   There is a decent site done by College of DuPage as well - also a bit klunky, and seems odd that one would have to use a small college website to get to that.   Might there be something on a NOAA/NWS site, or major commercial site, that has it?

Thanks for any info.

 

Download The Radar Now app. They just updated and now the nexrad local base reflectivities are back.

[WolfStock1]

On 8/31/2023 at 1:20 PM, Stormpc said:

Download The Radar Now app. They just updated and now the nexrad local base reflectivities are back.

 

Thanks.   Downloaded.   I see it has a free 5-day trial - I'll check that out next time we get some storms through (in a few days).   Looks like it has some promise.   Still though - it's a phone app; I'm hoping to find a web link, that I can use on PC or phone.

[WolfStock1]

On 8/31/2023 at 9:48 AM, Kmlwx said:

If you are just looking for basic radar - use the NWS LWX site and it is on there. Though you won't have a lot of options for different product types. Radarscope is best-in-class for mobile and if you are a higher end enthusiast you could also get GR2 or GR3 products on PC. 

NEXRAD is not a term specific to Wunderground - it's just what WSR-88D was referred to (is?)

 

Thanks for the tip.  I find the radars on the NWS extremely klunky though.   Really not much ability to customize view with pan and zoom.   One of the things I liked about the old WU method was I could have a super-quick gif that was specific to my location - e.g. zoomed right in to the area just around my house, so I could tell practically down to the second when it was going to start raining from a storm.    (RadarScope provides this, but only on phone, and it requires manual panning around - not a single quick click.)

E.g. this was URL I used for the gif:

https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?station=LWX&brand=wui&num=12&delay=15&type=NCR&frame=0&scale=0.125&noclutter=0&lat=39.15021336&lon=-77.48304690&label=Leesburg%2C+VA&showstorms=0&map.x=400&map.y=240&centerx=428&centery=280&transx=80&transy=80&showlabels=1&severe=0&rainsnow=0&lightning=0&smooth=0

(lat/long changed to protect the innocent)

All I had to do was tweak that as desired, and bookmark it, and it provided a great way to quickly see local hi-res radar; no app required and no web page to load other than just the one super-quick gif frame.

IIRC there was a newer version that was created a couple of years ago, that provided higher resolution, and I'm guessing that has something to do with this.   I'm guessing it's a licensing thing - like the people that put out the output charge more $ for it now, and WU wasn't willing to pay.   Just a guess though.

(Yeah I know NEXRAD was not a Wunderground thing; just that that was the one site that seemed to pipe it through directly, with the NEXRAD name).   

 

[Kmlwx]

NEXRAD data from the NWS is free for all. No licensing. However, the data feeds that NWS provides to apps like Radarscope are often just data - it's up to Radarscope or each individual provider to do color tables, and which products to offer. At the heart of it - Level 2 data, for example is just zeroes and ones until somebody makes it pretty.

Probably not a 100% 1:1 solution for what you're looking for but there may be a lesser known site around that could do something similar. 

[WolfStock1]

23 hours ago, Kmlwx said:

NEXRAD data from the NWS is free for all. No licensing. However, the data feeds that NWS provides to apps like Radarscope are often just data - it's up to Radarscope or each individual provider to do color tables, and which products to offer. At the heart of it - Level 2 data, for example is just zeroes and ones until somebody makes it pretty.

Probably not a 100% 1:1 solution for what you're looking for but there may be a lesser known site around that could do something similar. 

 

OK - seems like then that the functionality I'm really looking for was in the WU-specific "radblast" tool?  (that takes this data feed and makes the maps, adds the options, etc.)

I've updated the OP to indicate.

 

[BryanInMd]

I like College of Dupage for web based NEXRAD.

https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/nexrad/index.php?type=LWX-N0Q-1-24