This command-line utility is intended to provide quick access to current weather conditions and forecasts. Presently, it is capable of returning data for localities throughout the USA and some select locations globally by retrieving and formatting decoded METARs (Meteorological Aerodrome Reports) from NOAA (the USA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and forecasts/alerts from NWS (the USA National Weather Service). The tool is written to function in the same spirit as other command-line informational utilities like cal(1), calendar(1) and dict(1). It retrieves arbitrary weather data via precompiled correlations or custom-tailored aliases (system-wide or on a per-user basis). It can be freely used and redistributed under the terms of a BSD-like License.

My girlfriend had a long commute to/from work and school, and often wanted to check the weather both for home and her office. Unfortunately, starting a Web browser, pulling up a weather site, entering multiple ZIP codes and waiting for them to load is time-consuming for the marginally-impatient. Since she tended to stay logged into a shell server most of the time, I figured I'd install a quick command-line tool to retrieve weather info for her commute. To my surprise, a quick search turned up little that met my basic requirements:

• retrieve current data on-demand
• provide both current conditions and short-term forecasts
• simple, human-readable output
• easy to configure and use
• flexible command-line switches and options

A tarball for the most recent version of the weather utility can be had here:

• http://fungi.yuggoth.org/weather/src/

Alternatively, Debian and Ubuntu users can install the weather-util package from any mirror.