GeoNames Forum

If you dont mind me asking where do you get your weather data from?

Thanks

J

( p.s its a handy ws! )

Hi

The data is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

http://www.weather.gov/data/current_obs/

Cheers

Marc

I noticed you return data from some european stations such as:
<stationName>Passo Della Cisa</stationName>
<ICAO>LIMT</ICAO>
<countryCode>IT</countryCode>
<elevation>1040</elevation>
<lat>44.4166666666667</lat>
<lng>9.91666666666667</lng>

that are not NOAA stations.

What is the source in that case?

Marcello Ferrero
www.bluemapia.com

Also, is there any chance to extend the returned results to include TAF and Short TAF data? Even in raw format would be really helpful.

Marcello

Hi Marcello

I put it on the nice-to-have list. You are the first to ask, so I don't know whether others would also be interested.

Everybody: Please post to this thread if you think this would be a useful addition to our web services.

Best

Marc

Hi,
the reason why I think it is useful (and I would use it immediately when available) is that TAF contains weather forecast while METAR contains only the current weather status, not the forecast.

Marcello

Is there a reason why visibility infromation is currently not included in the wather reports? It is a normal part of Metar... (http://weather.unisys.com/wxp/Appendices/Formats/METAR.html#WEATHER). It would be really useful. Thanks
M.

I would certainly aprechiate TAF data as well. Further, the METAR seems to be delayed for 1 to 2 hours compared to the query at http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mgetmetar.pl. Is there any way this delay can be smaller? Is it parsing power; or is the FTP feed of NOAA dlayed?

GeoNames is reading and processing the weather data once per hour.

Marc

Hi Marc,

I'm using the data for a realtime flight planner for VFR pilots. Are there paid geonames providers that do provider quicker updates (30 minutes to an hour)? Or should I just use geonames to do the ICAO lookup and try to interface and parse fresh metar directly?

Currently the delay can be up to 2 hours as far as I can see.

Thanks for your reply.
Melvin

Hi Melvin

It does not make much sense for us to speed up the processing on our side as the weather data in the feeds we read has an average age of ca 2h. Reading it more often will not make this age disappear. The weather stations don't report continuously, they report periodically which leads to a certain age of the last report.

Best

Marc

Hi Marc,

This feed (via FTP files) is updated every hour:
ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/cycles/

Would it be good to use that as a feed? Instead of large FTP files; it's also shown as independend station at : ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/stations/EHAM.TXT

This database seems to be updated every 30 minutes (at x:55 and x:25) The thing is that for aviation a Metar is only valid for 2 hours. So people cannot get into the air with 2 hours old metars.

If I can be of any help; technically or with server power to achieve this; let me know.

If pilots are supposed to base their decision whether to fly or not on the service, then I would look for a more uptodate service. The GeoNames weather service is meant to give an information about the weather at a given point, but not to decide whether it is safe to fly or not.

Marc

HI Marc,

The NOOA station specific feed seems to be very quick. Sometimes even quicker than our local weatherstation. So it's up to you. I can build a quicker feed myself; or I can help checking if we can speed up geonames. Same amount of work for me.

Regards,
Melvin

P.s. sorry if I sound critical. I enjoy the service of geonames; and think it's great it's already setup like this.

Hi Melvin

The weather feed is now read every 30minutes.

Best

Marc

Great mark! It's very well aprechiated!