GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE WEATHER UTILITY Copyright (c) 2006 Jeremy Stanley , all rights reserved. Licensed per terms in the LICENSE file distributed with this software. WHAT? 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 by retrieving and formatting decoded METARs (Meteorological Aerodrome Reports) from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and forecasts from the NWS (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 can retrieve arbitrary weather data via specific command-line switches (station ID, city, state), or aliases can be configured system wide and on a per-user basis. It can be freely used and redistributed under the terms of the BSD License. WHY? My girlfriend has a long commute to/from work and school, and often wants 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 tends 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, but 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 WHERE? A tarball for the most recent version of the weather utility can be had here: http://fungi.yuggoth.org/weather/src/ Alternatively, Debian Etch (testing) and Sid (unstable) users can install the weather-util package from any mirror.