[HN Gopher] Weather.gov 2.0
___________________________________________________________________
Weather.gov 2.0
Author : KoftaBob
Score : 279 points
Date : 2024-03-02 09:30 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| piker wrote:
| Drupal. Interesting choice in 2024
| bsenftner wrote:
| I agree. Unless Drupal redesigned their core, the way plugins
| and themes work is insecure by design. Similar to how software
| was back in the 80's where it was assumed no bad actors were
| running within the environment, and due to that assumption
| every single thing is available to be mucked with.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Is there a CMS with such an ability?
| kapilvt wrote:
| Plone was closest I saw, also run by several gov agencies,
| but drupal popularity won out to due to ease of staffing.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Yeah this is why you use a php platform like laravel which
| actually is engineered to build abd extend rather than say
| WordPress with an insane plugin system
| karlshea wrote:
| Drupal is way more similar to Laravel these days (Drupal is
| now also built on top of Symfony) than WordPress.
| treflop wrote:
| You don't have to use third-party plugins or themes though?
|
| I mean if you built a site from scratch in Spring or Next.js
| and you start using third-party libraries or UI frameworks,
| all those third-party bits have full access to everything
| too.
| chx wrote:
| > the way plugins and themes work is insecure by design.
|
| Tell us more. (A lot more. "Extraordinary claims require
| extraordinary proof".)
| dubcanada wrote:
| Not really, most government websites use it. It's still very
| popular.
| bazil376 wrote:
| Most? Source?
| dubcanada wrote:
| https://groups.drupal.org/government-sites
|
| https://www.acquia.com/blog/drupal-for-government
|
| https://www.drupal.org/industries/government
|
| https://www.zyxware.com/article/6229/top-7-reasons-why-
| drupa...
|
| https://www.drupal.org/openplus
|
| https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk
| /...
|
| Now most may be a stretch, it's a hard metric to calculate
| without going around and counting every gov site. But for
| English speaking countries, it is very popular enough so
| that I'd say most gov/state/department websites are Drupal.
|
| That and I am a Drupal consultant. So I may be biased.
| circusfly wrote:
| Wheels remain an interesting choice in 2024 as well.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I wish there was a single place where all government related
| (open-source) projects are listed; maybe a usa-gov organization
| on GitHub where all repos can be easily accessible.
| jaz wrote:
| It's not exactly a single place, but this page [0] lists the
| Github organizations for many federal agencies. It's not
| comprehensive, notably it's missing the NSA organization [1].
|
| [0] https://code.gov/agencies
|
| [1] https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency
| xenophonf wrote:
| It's missing https://github.com/niaid/ and related NIAID
| repositories, too.
| Maxious wrote:
| https://government.github.com/community/ also has international
| organisations
| sofixa wrote:
| France has https://code.gouv.fr/, and sources are published on
| GitHub and SourceHut: https://github.com/codegouvfr
| https://git.sr.ht/~codegouvfr/
| prepend wrote:
| GitHub doesn't really allow nested or even related
| organizations so it would be a nightmare to have all repos in a
| single org.
|
| There is a GitHub for government [0] but it relies on contribs
| and isn't very complete.
|
| GSA started code.gov under the Obama administration with the
| aim to create a single index of all government projects. It
| withered under Trump and was basically defunded under Biden so
| they don't really do much other than link out to major agencies
| and there's no longer a requirement to timely index.
|
| My org has like a 1000 repos and we're one of hundreds of
| agencies so I can't imagine collecting all these together
| without a little effort. The original code.gov worked pretty
| well as everyone just dropped a code.json file onto their web
| site and GSA scooped them up and combined them into a single.
| So it's a real shame they stopped doing that, and stopped
| asking people to publish their code.jsons as it was a good
| idea.
|
| [0] https://government.github.com/community/
| mdaniel wrote:
| I'm not trying to start trouble, but GitHub is not the only
| game in town and GitLab for sure allows nested groups, with
| their own permission structures, with the extra benefit that
| the government could host their own GitLab instance for extra
| benefits
|
| Merely as a point of reference,
| https://github.com/orgs/microsoft/repositories cites they
| currently have 6100 repos with another 2200 in /orgs/Azure so
| 10000 in an GH org wouldn't be unprecedented. I couldn't
| readily find any way to cough up their other top-level
| brands, and the "topics" seem to apply only to the repos
| themselves, not to the GH Organizations
| prepend wrote:
| I use gitlab as well and really like their groups feature.
|
| My point stands though as it's really impossible to try to
| standardize an organization as massive as a government into
| a single code management system, much less a single org,
| even if it has fantastic hierarchical management.
|
| The government can host their own GitHub instance if they
| want to. I think the point is that there are probably
| thousands of "servers" with government repos. And
| consolidating to one "server" is a horrible idea.
|
| A catalog is good though.
| mlinksva wrote:
| I occasionally help maintain [0] above, pull requests welcome
| at https://github.com/github/government.github.com
|
| But for a universal (any host, any government) dataset
| contributing to wikidata would be helpful, and in the
| fullness of time I'd like to use that to cross-validate and
| identify missing entries
| https://github.com/github/government.github.com/issues/877
| but the properties available probably need work to get there,
| right now there's e.g.,
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P1324
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P2037
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P8827
| TedHerman wrote:
| One wonders if there had been similar "How will we ultimately
| succeed or fail" manifests for the Boeing 737 Max and for Gemini.
| barelyauser wrote:
| For any corporation everything can be boiled down to: profit or
| loss?
| dopylitty wrote:
| Yep, for government agencies the mission is to actually do
| good useful things. That contrasts with for profit companies'
| missions of siphoning the most money out of customers'
| wallets into the bank accounts of wealthy execs and
| shareholders by doing the least work possible and abusing
| your employees as much as possible.
|
| You can even see it in the mission statement in the link:
| >Because the mission and culture at NWS is built around
| serving, preparing, and protecting people, the site must do
| the same.
| geodel wrote:
| For Boeing it could be "door unhinges and blows away at 30K
| feet and no-one reports in media" For Gemini it would be
| everyone appreciate on how stunning and brave it is to deliver
| social justice.
| speff wrote:
| I've been using weather.gov as a no-BS site for getting local
| weather data that I knew would be stable (cough, DarkSky, cough).
| I'm a bit concerned that the ReadMe seems to only describe
| covering emergency events+broadcasting in 2.0. I could've missed
| it, but I hope porting over existing functionality is in scope
| after the MVP
| seanosaur wrote:
| > _Our strategy for our Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is to make
| it easier to communicate forecasts and conditions for regular
| and hazardous weather in a way that anyone can find,
| understand, and use to take action._
|
| I think they've got you covered. Maybe not directly porting
| over, but it sounds like they're aware of the non-emergency use
| cases.
| be_erik wrote:
| This new API coupled with their old API makes creating a
| DarkSky clone pretty simple. Here's mine: https://wthr.cloud/
|
| I'll definitely end up using the broadcasting/eventing API for
| push notifications.
| flymasterv wrote:
| Very nice. Beats mine: https://emvee.rocks/weather.html
| mgkimsal wrote:
| TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating
| 'hourly.periods.filter')
| be_erik wrote:
| Stupid order of operations bug. A refresh should do it.
| Thanks for the nudge to fix this up.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Error: could not get location: [object
| GeolocationPositionError]
| chrisweekly wrote:
| RangeError: date value is not finite in DateTimeFormat
| format()
|
| Something went wrong
| teeray wrote:
| Once you learn some of the weather terminology, your local NWS
| office's AFD (area forecast discussion) is easily the most
| accurate, honest forecast you can find.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, where they
| routinely screw up winter storms. Thankfully we have a couple
| of very competent meteorologists to keep us informed when
| it's needed most, otherwise the winter disaster scenarios
| would be much worse than it already is.
| monkburger wrote:
| Are you talking about the local NWS offices in the PNW?
|
| I always tell tech savvy people to look at the forecast
| discussion and not the infographics. For example, look at
| Spokane:
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=47.6572600000
| 0...
|
| Then select 'Forecast Discussion' and read the discussions.
| They are usually updated a few times a day at the minimum,
| but during active weather events they are generally updated
| every 3 to 4 hours with new information (more data from the
| 850mb layer, for example).
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I am a fan of the 2 day graphical forecast from NOAA,
| everything including dew point, cloud coverage, and wind
| speeds/direction on one screen and easy to understand the
| trend...
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.4503&lon=-1...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| After Dark sky went I've been using https://merrysky.net/ and
| the pirateweather data it's based on seems pretty good.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| Same, MerrySky been a very handy lens to view the data
| through. And, Pirate Weather has been a good, open source,
| drop in replacement for the parts of DarkSky I was using in
| Home Assistant.
| circusfly wrote:
| I'm a fan, miss DarkSky though but weather.gov is far and above
| better than any commercialized weather site IMO.
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965812 "Norwegian
| Meteorological Institute has an excellent free weather API"
| maxerickson wrote:
| Glad to see that they don't want to mandate it. The big radar
| update they did a few years ago was a disaster (slow, no easy
| deep links) that they have backed away from.
| destitude wrote:
| Yes, the new radar ux was a disaster. Forced me to find another
| source.
| superkuh wrote:
| Backed away from? They never even fixed the 'lite' version so
| that you could actually use the radar images to predict when it
| will rain (the image is so tiny it's useless:
| https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS_loop.gif).
| During the transition period years I must have sent a dozen
| emails to the noaa people asking them to please keep a simple
| animated radar image of CONUS available. It would be an easy
| thing. But they're absolutely dedicated to web application only
| access to weather data.
|
| And the most frustrating thing is that the links to the
| https://radar.weather.gov/ 'lite' version are only visible if
| you sucessfully execute JS. So the no-JS version is invisible
| to no-JS browsers. Whoever they had designing this front end
| had never heard of graceful degredation, let alone progressive
| enhancement. It remains an accessibility nightmare.
|
| Weather.gov 2.0 will be more of the same.
| maxerickson wrote:
| https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS-
| LARGE_loop.gi... is quite a bit bigger.
|
| I usually use the local radar gif though. My local office
| forecast pages link to the lite radars.
|
| It's straightforward to take a peak at the available gifs:
|
| https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/
| superkuh wrote:
| I'll be... the finally did it. Thanks for the update!
| circusfly wrote:
| I don't get these criticisms, radar.weather.gov is
| phenomenally great! It works on all devices and doesn't show
| Ads. Maybe all these negative comments are people who work at
| accuweather or other for money weather sites trying to
| disparage radar.weather.gov with fabricated nonsensical
| garbage.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| pre-Trump, knowledgeable netizens could access data
| directly, in large quantities since Federal data is already
| paid for by taxpayers. Things seem to have changed now that
| $MONEY is to be made in intermediating weather data feeds?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > fixed the 'lite' version so that you could actually use the
| radar images to predict when it will rain ...
|
| Those are the wrong links for that purpose. What you want is
| e.g.
|
| https://radar.weather.gov/station/knkx/standard
|
| Reach these by scrolling down your local forecast.weather.gov
| e.g.
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=32.95528450000.
| ..
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Try Nowcoast, radar with multiple layers of data...
|
| https://nowcoast.noaa.gov/
| maxerickson wrote:
| That has all the things I don't like about
| https://radar.weather.gov/
|
| The ridge gif loops load faster than the more complicated map
| starts to fill in...
| circusfly wrote:
| I don't understand, I love radar.weather.gov. It's fast,
| works extremely well, lets me zoom in on an area even as
| it's animating, works great on Windows, Linux, Chrome on
| Android, what's not to like?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Even as it is animating?
|
| The gif for an area covering a 2 hour drive in any
| direction loads in about a quarter second.
|
| I probably got a little soured on it when they made it
| the primary path from forecast pages at a time when it
| was still quite slow.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It was a disaster because the incumbent administration was
| doing AccuWeather's bidding to starve it. The radar map
| dramatically improved after the transition to Biden.
| bazil376 wrote:
| I see there is a contributing.MD file, but it's hard for me to
| really tell how I can contribute. As a perspective contributor,
| it would be nice to know how best to contribute.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| perspective (point of view) -> prospective (potential)
|
| sharing in hopes it's helpful, not to be pedantic
| bazil376 wrote:
| Thank you honestly I'm just dictating to my phone today
| because I'm so under the weather. Toddler germs getting the
| best of me.
| ck2 wrote:
| vaguely related, single most useful url on weather.gov imho, just
| change lat/lon
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical...
|
| just wish it could do the same layout historically in the past
| circusfly wrote:
| Too scientificy for my, I prefer
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.7771&lon=-1...
| momothereal wrote:
| Looks like this is being done under contract/partnership with 18F
| (GSA): https://18f.gsa.gov/
|
| > The fundamental problem that we've observed is that weather.gov
| reflects its organizational silos (Conway's Law) more than its
| users' needs. A lack of overall strategy, feedback/monitoring,
| and tools have perpetuated this problem.
|
| Wow, my org would not have the guts to write that down in a
| public README!
| redserk wrote:
| I wish more groups would be as transparent.
|
| Silos happen. I'm not willing to spread blame. I will aside
| some of my frustration if I know it's an acknowledged problem
| and there's willingness to address it.
| lizard wrote:
| I've found the problem with transparency and any sort of
| acknowledgement of problems in business, is that there too
| many other people whoa are all too willing to say, "We're
| awesome, just leave it to us!" And these are usually the
| teams that have the biggest problems and rely on silos to
| prevent others from seeing how bad it is.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| US Digital Service and 18F have done a huge service by
| normalizing the ability for agencies to say, "Heh, this sucks,
| but we're going to make it better." That safety is half the
| battle, otherwise there is no incentive for stakeholders to put
| their guard down and collaborate on a cohesive solution
| ("bureaucracy hacking").
|
| Building trust and relationships is an underrated component of
| these transformation efforts.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It still seems like there is quite a bit of siloing, though.
| The Office of Water Prediction for example runs its own GitHub
| org, has its own sites separate from water.weather.gov at
| preview.water.noaa.gov and again at water.noaa.gov/map, but all
| their field observations actually come from the USGS who host
| data and web services at waterdata.usgs.gov.
| weberer wrote:
| > feedback/monitoring
|
| This makes me worried that they're going to add some
| "analytics" tracking scripts in there that come with those
| damned annoying cookie pop-ups.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Dumb question but is this 2.0 live somewhere I can use it or just
| source code in development?
|
| I remember about 8 years ago there was an "experimental" site for
| one of the US government's aviation weather products. And it was
| so very good, designed modern and usable and clean. Didn't look
| at all like the usual awkward government website. The team seemed
| like nice folks too but were caught up in some multi-year
| government funding system. It eventually got shut down and IIRC,
| none of their work ever got promoted to the main site.
|
| We are very lucky in the US to have a fantastic weather service
| and a mandate for their products to be free and public domain.
| Unfortunately there's also a lot of political pressure on them to
| not be too good so that some commercial company can profit.
| AccuWeather was one such company, at least back in 2005:
| https://www.onthecommons.org/privatizing-weather/index.html
| huy-nguyen wrote:
| The README says they're done with prototyping and are now
| building the MVP.
| divbzero wrote:
| Looks like they have staging environments set up but probably
| not live to the public:
|
| https://github.com/weather-gov/weather.gov/tree/main/.github...
| monkburger wrote:
| Barry Myers / Accuweather would love nothing more than to
| privatize all weather forecasting services, which means I, and
| my colleagues at SPC, would be out of a job
| riemannzeta wrote:
| A vision of what the future could be for all of our federal
| agencies. Kudos to the National Weather Service for leading.
| circusfly wrote:
| You're doing great! radar.weather.gov is a terrific site, works
| on all devices, works extremely well and with zero Ads, please
| keep up the great work!
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Does anyone know where we can see the prototype? Is it a working
| prototype (is it this code?). Thanks!
| mdaniel wrote:
| _I hope I don 't cause someone's pager to go off on a Saturday
| by linking to a staging site from HN :pray:_
|
| Some other kind soul
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574022> found the
| staging (and eric and greg, heh) manifests
| <https://github.com/weather-
| gov/weather.gov/blob/6e98dcff73bc...>, which led to
| <https://weathergov-api-proxy.app.cloud.gov> which led to
| https://weathergov-design.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.65...
| containing the banner "This is a beta site.
| https://weather.gov/ remains the authoritative source of
| weather information." so chances are it's that
|
| https://weathergov-staging.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.6...
| also works, but was slower. I didn't try eric or greg's copy
| :-P
| makk wrote:
| "Weather.gov 2.0 will only succeed if everyone with NWS sees the
| site reflect their values, much like the agency"
|
| "Strategy for prioritization: ... Add complexity, ASAP"
| nikolaj wrote:
| I wonder if this will impact api.weather.gov.. I hacked a little
| wunderground inspired dashboard a while back
| (https://weather.nikolaj.dev) that I still use most days.. but
| have stalled out a bit in rolling my own marine forecast for surf
| reports. Would love if they finally populated those fields (saves
| me figuring out the grib files)
| patcon wrote:
| Fwiw one of their architectural diagrams or api.weather.gov
| outside the scope of this project :)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| I love this! Weather underground's 10 day forecast is my
| favorite UI/layout, but the ads haven gotten brutal.
| eclipticplane wrote:
| I like the interface.
|
| Nit: it redirected me to San Diego weather after a few seconds
| after I had already put in a different location. Maybe because
| I block the location request?
| therein wrote:
| Is the data still coming from Raytheon?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I love the weather.gov website as it currently is. Can't wait for
| the new one to be bloated JS soup optimized for TikTok'ers.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| > Everyone's feedback has to be factored into the solution
|
| This generally seems impossible, what if people have conflicting
| feedback?
| ejb999 wrote:
| thats what makes bureaucracies run (govt and big corps) - and
| why it is so frustrating if you come from a startup or small
| consultancy background to operate in huge bureaucracies - many
| folks in these big orgs only job is to sit in meetings and
| study things to death or else raise objections to theoretical
| problems that may never happen - in order to justify their
| existence, thinking that the more they study the problem, the
| better the solution will be - it usually does not end up with a
| better solution - just a late one, and more expensive and
| bloated.
| uneekname wrote:
| weather.gov is unironically one of my favorite websites, and I
| visit it almost every day. I am cautiously optimistic about this
| new version!
| catgirlinspace wrote:
| Would be neat if this new site gives a bit more visibility to
| CWOP stations.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Something I was hoping to see is more about APIs for folks making
| their own specialized experiences. NOAA is doing a good job at
| raw data, but a lot of gov services consumption & utilization is
| more specific.
|
| We are building some emergency management tools here (genAI
| first: continuous monitoring -> alerting, chatbots, tailored
| sitrep reports: feel free to reach out!), and as many agencies,
| utilities, etc, need specialized variants, I've come to
| appreciate the last mile data & UI difficulties that weather.gov
| must be solving internally and would benefit other agencies.
|
| Weather.gov afaict is run by NWS under NOAA, so interesting it's
| not in the mission revamp here..
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > This has led to a disorganized repository of valuable
| information that external users struggle to use ...
|
| Not my experience: forecast.weather.gov works just great for me
| as it is now.
|
| Anyone else getting flashbacks of the Reddit/Gnome/KDE/... UI
| renovations?
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(page generated 2024-03-02 23:01 UTC)