Imported from archive.
* Release 1.5. * (all): Updated copyright notices for 2010. * FAQ, INSTALL, LICENSE, README: Reformatted as ReStructuredText. * FAQ: Updated to mention alternative sources for NOAA's stations list, in case the recommended one is unavailable (thanks Celejar!). * NEWS: Renamed to ChangeLog and refactored into GNU format. * weather: Added some comment padding between the shebang line and the copyright, so that distributions wishing to carry patches which modify the interpreter path don't have to refresh them every year when the copyright line changes in their context. * weather, weather.1, weatherrc.5, weather.py: Added experimental alert, atypes, aurl and zones options to support retrieval, filtering and formatting of unexpired NWS severe weather advisories. * weather.1, weatherrc.5: Minor cosmetic fixes to option descriptions. * weather.1, weatherrc.5, weather.py: Added imperial and metric options to filter/convert display units (thanks to Andrew Carter for this suggestion!). * weather.py: Fixed a METAR parsing error which would trigger an IndexError exception if the NWS didn't have a station description on file (thanks to Celejar for reporting the bug!). Fixed METAR title line parsing to look for human-readable city and state in the first line--previous code stopped showing the city name after NWS made slight format mods. Upped the version to 1.5. * weatherrc: Additional PIE (Saint Petersburg, FL), PNC (Ponca City, OK), and PNS (Pensacola, FL) aliases.
This commit is contained in:
Jeremy Stanley
111
FAQ
111
FAQ
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WEATHER UTILITY
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======================================================
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Frequently Asked Questions About the Weather Utility
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======================================================
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Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org>.
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Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is
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granted under terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed with
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this software.
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:Copyright: (c) 2006-2010 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org>. Permission to
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use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is granted under
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terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed with this software.
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Table of Contents:
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.. contents::
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1. Can I help?
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2. How do I figure out my local METAR station ID?
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3. How do I figure out my local city name and state abbreviation?
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4. I live outside the USA--can this be made to work for me
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anyway?
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5. Why do I get the wrong forecast when specifying -i or --id?
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1. Can I help?
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Sure! Bug reports and feature suggestions are always welcome, but
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fixes and patches are of course preferred. Contact
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fungi@yuggoth.org if desired, but please read this FAQ and the
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included manuals for weather(1) and weatherrc(5) before asking
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questions that might be answered therein. One big way anyone can
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help is to provide me with some additional mappings of METAR
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station ID, city name and state abbreviation for inclusion in the
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default /etc/weatherrc file.
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--------------
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Sure! Bug reports and feature suggestions are always welcome, but fixes and
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patches are of course preferred. Contact fungi@yuggoth.org if desired, but
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please read this FAQ and the included manuals for weather(1) and weatherrc(5)
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before asking questions that might be answered therein. One big way anyone can
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help is to provide me with some additional mappings of METAR station ID, city
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name and state abbreviation for inclusion in the default /etc/weatherrc file.
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2. How do I figure out my local METAR station ID?
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-------------------------------------------------
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The list of stations is found at http://weather.noaa.gov/data/nsd_cccc.gz (it's
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thousands of lines long, so I recommend keyword searching in your browser or
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using grep(1) to find what you're looking for). From time to time, the
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compression on their site seems to be failing, resulting in zero-byte files. If
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you run into this issue, you can get uncompressed and zip-compressed versions
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by replacing the "gz" suffix in the URL with "txt" or "zip" respectively. The
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list can also be obtained from the following URLs in a pinch, though they are
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not guaranteed to be up to date (thanks Celejar!):
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The list of stations is found at
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http://weather.noaa.gov/data/nsd_cccc.gz (it's thousands of lines
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long, so I recommend keyword searching in your browser or using
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grep(1) to find what you're looking for).
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* http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/surface/stations.txt
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* http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/stations.txt
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3. How do I figure out my local city name and state abbreviation?
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
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The forecasts can be located starting from
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http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/city/ (choose the
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state abbreviation to get to a list of cities in that state).
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4. I live outside the USA--can this be made to work for me
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anyway?
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METAR station IDs can be found for cities and airports worldwide,
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but forecast data is harder to come by. If you have any
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recommendations of forecast data for other countries available in a
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format like NOAA's, I will be happy to try and find a way to
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integrate it into the weather utility, but I suspect that some
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serious modification would be necessary given that the data is
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likely to be published in a non-English language, requiring some
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additional input from speakers of that language for how to handle
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filtering and formatting of the text.
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http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/city/ (choose the state abbreviation
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to get to a list of cities in that state).
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4. I live outside the USA--can this be made to work for me anyway?
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------------------------------------------------------------------
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METAR station IDs can be found for cities and airports worldwide, but forecast
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data is harder to come by. If you have any recommendations of forecast data for
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other countries available in a format like NOAA's, I will be happy to try and
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find a way to integrate it into the weather utility, but I suspect that some
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serious modification would be necessary given that the data is likely to be
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published in a non-English language, requiring some additional input from
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speakers of that language for how to handle filtering and formatting of the
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text.
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5. Why do I get the wrong forecast when specifying -i or --id?
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--------------------------------------------------------------
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The -i or --id switch (or the id parameter in an alias definition), only tells
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weather(1) what current conditions to retrieve. If you specify -f or --forecast
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on the command line (or forecast=True in an alias) without providing a city
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name and state abbreviation (-c/--city and -s/--st, or city and st in an alias)
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and are seeing an actual forecast, then you probably have a default city and
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state abbreviation set in your config. See question 3 above for information on
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figuring out what city name and state abbreviation to use, and the manual for
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weatherrc(5) for information on defining aliases.
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The -i or --id switch (or the id parameter in an alias definition),
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only tells weather(1) what current conditions to retrieve. If you
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specify -f or --forecast on the command line (or forecast=True in
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an alias) without providing a city name and state abbreviation
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(-c/--city and -s/--st, or city and st in an alias) and are seeing
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an actual forecast, then you probably have a default city and state
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abbreviation set in your config. See question 3 above for
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information on figuring out what city name and state abbreviation
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to use, and the manual for weatherrc(5) for information on defining
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aliases.
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6. Where can I get a list of the NWS advisory zones for alerts?
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---------------------------------------------------------------
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The lists of advisory zones by region are found aggregated at
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http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/zonecatalog.curr.tar (it's several thousand
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files totalling well over a hundred thousand lines of text, so I recommend
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downloading, unpacking and using a recursive grep(1) to find what you're
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looking for).
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