OpenSprinkler Forums Third-Party Software WeatherUnderground now appears fee-based-only Reply To: WeatherUnderground now appears fee-based-only

#53795

SoothingMist
Participant

This is good news Franz.

For weather data providers, WeatherUnderground’s plans are good. But, if I have my own weather station, there is no need for me to pay to access another source for current data. For historical data, one can access the US Government’s historical weather data source, which includes foreign countries: https://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/?datasetabbv=GSOD&countryabbv&georegionabbv. (During the present government shutdown, this site is dormant.) For instance, I have downloaded historical weather data for a specific weather station in Ethiopia going back to 1957, and have used this data to drive an evapotranspiration model (https://www.unirc.it/documentazione/materiale_didattico/1462_2016_412_24101.pdf) and to build a statistical rain-prediction model (https://www.rulequest.com/download.html).

At issue is that this site does not produce weather predictions. Nor does it give present conditions. If those are required then there may be a need to access formal weather-prediction sites, of which there are many. Many of these sites use the results of three different physics models to predict weather. Each person should decide if those predictions are worth the money, given the application at hand.

Something that may also be of interest, https://www.weather.gov provides free weather forecasts and can be programmatically queried via its REST interface. The output can be programmatically parsed and applied. But, these are just for locations in the USA. I don’t know if such services are available in other countries.

Best,

Peter.