X-Git-Url: https://www.yuggoth.org/gitweb?p=weather.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=FAQ;h=280c0affe8f36c9bf905abe922b4915a40c8158f;hp=54a44d80f514675dc09f8a9ce61a915046056674;hb=1ec2848c205249420d64d7924f2ee1840efff140;hpb=4d25a49d5a5ec5415f8e83ba26fea5adf4e5512a diff --git a/FAQ b/FAQ index 54a44d8..280c0af 100644 --- a/FAQ +++ b/FAQ @@ -2,67 +2,77 @@ Frequently Asked Questions About the Weather Utility ====================================================== -:Copyright: (c) 2006-2010 Jeremy Stanley . Permission to - use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is granted under - terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed with this software. +:Copyright: (c) 2006-2017 Jeremy Stanley . Permission + to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is + granted under terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed + with this software. .. contents:: 1. Can I help? -------------- -Sure! Bug reports and feature suggestions are always welcome, but fixes and -patches are of course preferred. Contact fungi@yuggoth.org if desired, but -please read this FAQ and the included manuals for weather(1) and weatherrc(5) -before asking questions that might be answered therein. One big way anyone can -help is to provide me with some additional mappings of METAR station ID, city -name and state abbreviation for inclusion in the default /etc/weatherrc file. +Sure! Bug reports and feature suggestions are always welcome, but fixes +and patches are of course preferred. Contact fungi@yuggoth.org if +desired, but please read this FAQ and the included manuals for +weather(1) and weatherrc(5) before asking questions that might be +answered therein. 2. How do I figure out my local METAR station ID? ------------------------------------------------- -The list of stations is found at http://weather.noaa.gov/data/nsd_cccc.gz (it's -thousands of lines long, so I recommend keyword searching in your browser or -using grep(1) to find what you're looking for). From time to time, the -compression on their site seems to be failing, resulting in zero-byte files. If -you run into this issue, you can get uncompressed and zip-compressed versions -by replacing the "gz" suffix in the URL with "txt" or "zip" respectively. The -list can also be obtained from the following URLs in a pinch, though they are -not guaranteed to be up to date (thanks Celejar!): - - * http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/surface/stations.txt - * http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/stations.txt +The list of stations included in the "stations" file is comprised of +thousands of entries, so if you're within the USA it's recommended to +use weather's built-in Census place name and ZCTA (postal ZIP code) +searching capabilities. Otherwise, using its latitude,longitude +coordinate search feature is probably your best bet. See the weather(1) +manual for examples. 3. How do I figure out my local city name and state abbreviation? ----------------------------------------------------------------- -The forecasts can be located starting from -http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/city/ (choose the state abbreviation -to get to a list of cities in that state). +As of the 2.0 release, this is no longer necessary. In Spring of 2011 +the NWS switched away from city-named forecast zone IDs to the numeric +state zone IDs also used for alerts. As a result, weather now comes with +pregenerated correlations between airports/stations and zones along with +USA Census (FIPS and ZCTA/ZIP code) and global latitude,longitude +coordinates and can search among them in a flexible and intuitive +manner. See the weather(1) manual for examples. 4. I live outside the USA--can this be made to work for me anyway? ------------------------------------------------------------------ -METAR station IDs can be found for cities and airports worldwide, but forecast -data is harder to come by. If you have any recommendations of forecast data for -other countries available in a format like NOAA's, I will be happy to try and -find a way to integrate it into the weather utility, but I suspect that some -serious modification would be necessary given that the data is likely to be -published in a non-English language, requiring some additional input from -speakers of that language for how to handle filtering and formatting of the -text. +ICAO codes for METAR stations can be found for cities and airports +worldwide, but forecast and alert data is harder to come by. If you have +any recommendations of plaintext data for other countries available in a +format like NOAA's, I will be happy to start incorporating it into the +weather utility. If the data is published in a non-English language, +I'll require some additional input from speakers of that language for +how to handle filtering and formatting of the text. 5. Why do I get the wrong forecast when specifying -i or --id? -------------------------------------------------------------- -The -i or --id switch (or the id parameter in an alias definition), only tells -weather(1) what current conditions to retrieve. If you specify -f or --forecast -on the command line (or forecast=True in an alias) without providing a city -name and state abbreviation (-c/--city and -s/--st, or city and st in an alias) -and are seeing an actual forecast, then you probably have a default city and -state abbreviation set in your config. See question 3 above for information on -figuring out what city name and state abbreviation to use, and the manual for -weatherrc(5) for information on defining aliases. +As of the 2.0 release, this question is no longer relevant. 6. Where can I get a list of the NWS advisory zones for alerts? --------------------------------------------------------------- -The lists of advisory zones by region are found aggregated at -http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/zonecatalog.curr.tar (it's several thousand -files totalling well over a hundred thousand lines of text, so I recommend -downloading, unpacking and using a recursive grep(1) to find what you're -looking for). +As of the 2.0 release, this is no longer necessary. See FAQ entries #2 +and #3 for more detail. + +7. What values are valid for a --headers list? +---------------------------------------------- +The default set it uses if you don't override it yourself on the command +line or in configuration is as follows:: + + heat_index + precipitation_last_hour + relative_humidity + sky_conditions + temperature + weather + wind + windchill + +These are a case-insensitive match against the start of lines in a +decoded METAR up to the first colon (:) with underscores (_) replaced by +spaces. You can see the full METAR for a given condition report by +passing --verbose or by observing one directly (perhaps by looking in +your *datacache* directory). Unfortunately I haven't found any proper +specification for the decoded METAR format used by the NWS so know of no +comprehensive list of what lines might appear.