Beating the radar rat race
(That’s the name of an old Commodore 64 game, by the bye.)
In a recent forum conversation about how the public has to rely on either TV stations or the Weather Channel for radar views, I thought I’d try to edumacate folks. All you need for an almost-live animated weather radar view is the interwebs! Here’s the recipe:
- Go to https://www.noaa.gov/
- Punch in your ZIP code under “Weather.gov Forecast”
- When your local Weather Service page loads, page down to “Radar & Satellite Images”
- Click “Loop” under “Reflectivity”
- Give Java a moment to spin up and do its funky voodoo
- When the animated radar starts running, go down and click “AutoUpdate is OFF” so that it says it’s ON.
- You now have a self-updating radar view with about a ~15/20 minute lag!
You can also click on the radar and zoom in on your city if you like. Or someone else’s! Watch destruction and mayhem rain down on those other guys for a change.
#7 is important – the Weather Service’s web radar is really an afterthought compared to their meteorologists having live data. Call it a nice side effect, but don’t be a bonehead: use this only to give yourself a heads-up advance warning of what’s inbound – there’s too much of a lag to wait until it’s on top of you and then suddenly make life-or-death decisions on 20-minute-old data.
During tornado season, I have one older PC that’s almost exclusively dedicated to running the local radar view, and maybe one out of Tulsa or OKC if there’s some big bad stuff heading in from there. Your tax dollars are paying for the Weather Service bandwidth – use it!… Read more
Looks like it’s time to batten down the hatches, because the way the forecast is going, there’ll be a freakin’ tropical storm in Arkansas Saturday night and especially Sunday morning. Being something on the order of an entire state inland, this is, to say the least, just a little odd. I have to say that the part I’m really looking forward to is feeding horses Sunday morning with 60mph winds! (I’ll get video if I can, though it’ll probably just look like Deadliest Catch with horses instead of crabs.) (Which, now that I sit there and think about it, might just be interesting except that I’ll be the poor doofus in the heavy weather gear.) What was left of Gustav brought me the first-ever leak in the roof here at the house, so I can’t exactly say that this year’s hurricane season – which I normally watch from afar with weather-geek fascination – is some distant experience that doesn’t impact me apart from vaguely threatening to raise what I pay for a gallon of gas. (Hell, what doesn’t threaten to raise that these days?)
Okay, so maybe we didn’t skate out of the bad weather as unscathed as I thought. Apparently there was some roof damage, nothing big but also not the sort of thing you want to allow to get big over time, and – to my total slackjawed amazement – the insurance adjuster decided both vehicles were totalled. 😯 I really didn’t think they were that bad – yeah, a few dings and dents here and there, especially on the driver’s side of my wife’s vehicle which she uses to deliver the mail – but apparently the insurance company feels like spending money. So…I guess the check’s in the mail, so to speak. In the meantime, either hail or wind or both apparently managed to push our sliding door off its track, something I had to fix tonight.
I’m sitting here watching KTUL showing, at almost 3 in the morning, a live shot of a rotating wall cloud marching into Tulsa County, and I’m thinking “man, am I glad I don’t live in Tulsa County.” Still, pretty amazing stuff…to watch from a distance of two hours away. No disrespect intended toward any TV weather guys or gals I’ve ever worked with in the past, but the guys at KTUL know how to make a show out of this stuff. I love the Wall Cloud Channel…so long as it’s not in my back yard.
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