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2 New Version Information for the Weather Utility
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5 :Copyright: (c) 2006-2016 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org>. Permission
6 to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is
7 granted under terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed
14 The old http://weather.noaa.gov/pub site was deprecated and as of August
15 23 subsequently removed from service. Correlation data files have been
16 updated to use the working http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov URL instead.
18 Updated correlation data is included based on newer 2014 Census data.
20 The correlation data rebuilding process has been improved and more
21 thoroughly documented.
23 Radian floats in correlation data are now truncated to 7 decimal places,
24 significantly reducing rounding error fuzz against future data file
27 The /etc/weather/weatherrc file mentioned in documentation is now
32 The 2.0 release involves a major rewrite of the underlying code and
33 addition of large volumes of previously-unneeded location correlation
34 data. In the Spring of 2011 the USA NOAA/NWS made significant changes to
35 the way they organized and published forecast data such that it could
36 no longer be supported by design assumptions inherent within this
37 utility. Attempts were made to preserve backward compatability with 1.x
38 command-line usage and configuration file formats where possible, but
39 some regressions are unfortunately unavoidable. The aurl, city, flines,
40 furl, id, murl, st and zones options have been removed. Minimal logic
41 was retained to recognize and continue supporting limited use of city,
42 id and st in configuration files, though these are deprecated for
43 eventual removal in a future release.
45 On a positive note, this provided an opportunity to design out
46 some reported bugs and add in numerous requested features. Highlights
49 * Because NOAA/NWS now treats forecast data in the same way as alerts,
50 the alert reporting features are now much better integrated and no
51 longer considered a beta test.
53 * The lack of memorable alert/forecast zone coding in the new scheme
54 drove development of intelligent search functionality, allowing users
55 to find stations and zones through a variety of methods like place
56 names, IATA/FAA/ICAO/FIPS/ZIP codes and even raw coordinates.
58 * To reduce unnecessary load on NOAA/NWS servers, the utility now
59 caches retrieved data for a configurable period of time.
61 * Airport code lists are no longer maintained in configuration (though
62 they are still easily overridden through configuration), and are
63 instead now separately managed in a manner similar to the other
64 pregenerated correlation data.
66 Worth noting, however, is that the new forecast data publication format
67 (now essentially identical to the alert format) is all-caps freeform
68 prose, and not easily parsed as a result. Due to the lengthy nature of
69 this output, piping it through a pager is highly recommended.