5 ms·

I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the NOAA website. The US government provides free, (adfree) and detailed forecasts whi

I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the NOAA website. The US government provides free, (adfree) and detailed forecasts which are more accurate than 3rd party forecasts. Most 3rd party forecast sites artificially inflate the chance of rain and other factors (because a false negative is better than a false positive, in regards to rain). The NOAA forecasts do not have this "fake" adjustment in them and are very accurate. NOAA forecasts also come with the forecast discussion, written by the Meteorologists which explain the current forecast in a detailed, meteorological way. http://www.weather.gov/ http://www.weather.gov/

VLM 12y ago
My favorite feature of weather.gov is more or less stable deep linking. So I can deep link to my local weather and by local forecast discussion. This would be a disaster for a clickbait supplier but is awesome for end users.
lmg643 12y ago
I like the weather channel's hourly weather forecast. clean, simple and runs on desktop and mobile. Also fairly accurate - will i need an umbrella by the time my evening commute hits? by the time i am coming home from dinner, etc? And I can link right to it. http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/10011 http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/10011
gk1 12y ago
I've found wunderground.com to be the perfect combination of clarity and high-density information. There are no click-bait "related" links there.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  I also prefer their website on desktop, but it is perpetually annoying to me that you have to pay a yearly subscription to make ads go away in their Android app. To WU: I will pay whatever you want, just make it one-time.
ritchiea 12y ago
My guess is most people go with the first search result for weather + zip code which is usually weather.com.
- brownbat 12y ago
  I think you're right historically, and people built up patterns from what used to be the case. On Google or Bing now though, such a search just returns the forecast directly, without requiring a clickthrough. I'd be surprised if weather.com or even wunderground aren't the first casualties of the trend towards smarter search engines.
lovemenot 12y ago
>> I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the NOAA website. One obvious reason is that many people follow the weather in regions other than those covered by that service.
jordanpg 12y ago
I suspect the answer has something to do with web design. weather.com has got swarms of designers being paid to make people click on things while weather.gov will only appeal to folks who eschew such things.
- logn 12y ago
  Also, as a red-green colorblind person I can't make any sense of weather.gov's maps.
mrgriscom 12y ago
Let's not forget when The Weather Channel lobbied to make this NWS information unavailable to the general public, and only distributed to approved providers like itself!
- mrgriscom 12y ago
  I'm mistaken-- it was actually AccuWeather.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tjohns 12y ago
One problem I've always had with weather.gov is the radar maps just display the raw data from each ground station. Their system doesn't attempt to fill in missing coverage from neighboring radar sites. So it often looks like the edge of a storm is just a few dozen miles away, when in reality the storm continues for hundreds of miles (far beyond the coverage of the current radar station). As an example: http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=atx&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=atx&product=N0R&overl... This storm (assuming you're looking at this shortly after my comment was posted) continues down the entire northwest US coast into Oregon and Northern California. But here it looks like it's contained entirely within Washington state.
- porobv 12y ago
  You're only looking at Washington, what do you expect. Here is the entire country. http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php
  - tjohns 12y ago
    I'd expect either (a) an indication of how far the radar's range is, or (b) data fill from nearby stations so that that the entire visible map has radar data. Pretty much all other weather sites go with option (b).

VLM 12y ago

My favorite feature of weather.gov is more or less stable deep linking. So I can deep link to my local weather and by local forecast discussion. This would be a disaster for a clickbait supplier but is awesome for end users.

lmg643 12y ago

I like the weather channel's hourly weather forecast. clean, simple and runs on desktop and mobile. Also fairly accurate - will i need an umbrella by the time my evening commute hits? by the time i am coming home from dinner, etc? And I can link right to it. http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/10011 http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/10011

gk1 12y ago

I've found wunderground.com to be the perfect combination of clarity and high-density information. There are no click-bait "related" links there.

jordanpg 12y ago
I also prefer their website on desktop, but it is perpetually annoying to me that you have to pay a yearly subscription to make ads go away in their Android app. To WU: I will pay whatever you want, just make it one-time.

ritchiea 12y ago

My guess is most people go with the first search result for weather + zip code which is usually weather.com.

brownbat 12y ago
I think you're right historically, and people built up patterns from what used to be the case. On Google or Bing now though, such a search just returns the forecast directly, without requiring a clickthrough. I'd be surprised if weather.com or even wunderground aren't the first casualties of the trend towards smarter search engines.

lovemenot 12y ago

>> I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the NOAA website. One obvious reason is that many people follow the weather in regions other than those covered by that service.

jordanpg 12y ago

I suspect the answer has something to do with web design. weather.com has got swarms of designers being paid to make people click on things while weather.gov will only appeal to folks who eschew such things.

logn 12y ago
Also, as a red-green colorblind person I can't make any sense of weather.gov's maps.

mrgriscom 12y ago

Let's not forget when The Weather Channel lobbied to make this NWS information unavailable to the general public, and only distributed to approved providers like itself!

mrgriscom 12y ago
I'm mistaken-- it was actually AccuWeather.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tjohns 12y ago

One problem I've always had with weather.gov is the radar maps just display the raw data from each ground station. Their system doesn't attempt to fill in missing coverage from neighboring radar sites. So it often looks like the edge of a storm is just a few dozen miles away, when in reality the storm continues for hundreds of miles (far beyond the coverage of the current radar station). As an example: http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=atx&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=atx&product=N0R&overl... This storm (assuming you're looking at this shortly after my comment was posted) continues down the entire northwest US coast into Oregon and Northern California. But here it looks like it's contained entirely within Washington state.

porobv 12y ago
You're only looking at Washington, what do you expect. Here is the entire country. http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php
- tjohns 12y ago
  I'd expect either (a) an indication of how far the radar's range is, or (b) data fill from nearby stations so that that the entire visible map has radar data. Pretty much all other weather sites go with option (b).