Better Weather Forecast
Categories: Information Technology, TechnologySo I, like most people tend to default to the easiest, most memorable sites on the web. As such, www.weather.com had been my preferred site for local weather for quite a while. At first the site was great, but as time passed, weather.com displayed more ads, then animated ads, then popup ads, then animated popup ads, then more animated popup ads. At the time of this writing weather.com is showing nine ads on the local forecast page which additionally pushes the actual forecast so far down the page I have to scroll to see it.
While working at Boston University I stumbled upon a much better alternative. While checking some background information on a NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) grant I stumbled across the site for the National Weather Service’s site.
nws.noaa.gov offers the same kind of localized forecast as weather.com with no (none, nada, zilch) ads. Check it out. Enter your zip code in the box on the left of the page and click go. You will be taken to a 7 day forecast with current conditions, satellite images, a graphical “Forecast at a Glance” and a detailed 7-day forecast all free of commercial intrusion.
Since we’re already paying for this through our taxes I think it’s about time we start taking full advantage of it. I think you’ll agree this is a much better site to get your weather from.
Technorati tags: weather, weather forecast, forecast
3 Responses to “Better Weather Forecast”
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al Says:
August 10th, 2005 at 9:27 amI’ve got to agree with you … the NOAA site is much better than weather.com. I too am entirely pissed about the number of ads on weather.com and shows me how motivated they are by money (and makes me wonder how much money those ads get them). The NOAA forecast also seems to be right more often than not. The only gripe I have with the NOAA site is that the doppler radar is kind of antiquated, is sometimes hard to read, and sometimes just doesn’t work at all. The radar is the one thing weather.com got right …. Oh and if you hadn’t heard, there was a senator (funded by intellicast, who makes you pay for weather) that was trying to pass a bill that would shutdown public access to the NOAA site even though it’s our tax money paying for it. I’m not sure that bill has died yet, but I sure as hell hope it does.
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Matt Says:
August 10th, 2005 at 1:27 pmYeah…while its a snazzy site and all of that; I still think it sucks to look at. Definately in need of a facelift.
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Life After Coffee » Better Weather Forecast: An Update Says:
September 22nd, 2005 at 11:28 am[...] In my previous post Better Weather Forecast I encouraged folks to try out the National Weather Service website for local forecasts without the irritating ads that The Weather Channel seems to run. [...]
