Weather Underground is now useless.

Weather Underground has not only decreased in content, it is often not accessible. This now happens almost daily. Today I have been trying to access the site for hours, and this is the result:

Screenshot_20190308-122338_Weather.jpg
 
I've come to terms with my transition from WU nee: Intellicast to DarkSky. Still learning, but not bad.
 
wsuffa said:
You would think that IBM as a technology company could figure out how to run a website. Makes you wonder about their other products.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the acquisition of Foreflight by Boeing couldn't possibly lead to its destruction... :cool:
 
Michael Nutt said:
Weather Underground has not only decreased in content, it is often not accessible. This now happens almost daily. Today I have been trying to access the site for hours, and this is the result:

View attachment 72383
Click to expand...

It's almost always the app, not the feed. Force-stop the app and re-open it, and it should work.

That being said, I got tired of force-stopping WU and uninstalled it in favor of DarkSky, whose interface I don't like as much, but whose weather reporting is much more precise. Their precipitation reports typically are along the lines of, "Light snow starting in six minutes and lasting 23 minutes." Excellent information. It also lets you become part of the crowd-sourcing either by installing a weather station, reporting current conditions, or allowing them to access your phone's barometer.

As for WU, one would hope that IBM could build a weather app that actually worked. But one would hope in vain.

Rich
 
Did you know that you can STILL get info from intellicast? Unfortunately, I got the message:

ferencmerenda,

We are sorry, but we don't allow users with less than 5 posts to include any links in their post content. These posts will be automatically rejected in order to prevent spam. Many other "spammy" words will also cause posts for new users to be rejected. We encourage you to jump right in and introduce yourself or participate in existing conversations.

Thanks,

PoA Management Council

Dismiss Notice
Weather Underground is now useless.

So I guess it will be something everyone has to figure-out themselves. Kinda sad. Message me, if you want to learn how.
 
So Good Luck to all!

(The meteorology section of Ground School was always my favorite... and the FAR's the toughest)
 
Palmpilot said:
I still use Wunderground because their ten-day forecasts have graphs of predicted temperature, pressure, precipitation chance, and wind, and their hourly forecasts also extend out ten days (not that hourly forecasts are reliable that far out).
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This feature shows up blank 1 out of 3 times. Reloading or waiting a few hours doesn't help. On Wundermap, the model data is now blank. I have not seen it in weeks. Also, using the drop-down feature to change location causes a Page Not Found error. The frustrating part is that I would good money (a monthly fee even) to have the old Wunderground on the web (without ads). I will NEVER use an app given their data collection policies and also because a phone screen is not a monitor size. TWC should have never bought Wunderground. That site was created with features that would only be used by a small community willing to learn. It was never going to be a big moneymaker.
 
Bruzote said:
This feature shows up blank 1 out of 3 times. Reloading or waiting a few hours doesn't help. On Wundermap, the model data is now blank. I have not seen it in weeks. Also, using the drop-down feature to change location causes a Page Not Found error. The frustrating part is that I would good money (a monthly fee even) to have the old Wunderground on the web (without ads). I will NEVER use an app given their data collection policies and also because a phone screen is not a monitor size. TWC should have never bought Wunderground. That site was created with features that would only be used by a small community willing to learn. It was never going to be a big moneymaker.
Click to expand...
Are you trying Wunderground on a smart phone or on a desktop/laptop computer? I use the latter and seldom have those problems, although lately, it seems to have been hacked: I've been occasionally getting an aggressive popup warning that all my data is going to be erased if I don't click on a button. :mad:
 
Palmpilot said:
Are you trying Wunderground on a smart phone or on a desktop/laptop computer? I use the latter and seldom have those problems, although lately, it seems to have been hacked: I've been occasionally getting an aggressive popup warning that all my data is going to be erased if I don't click on a button. :mad:
Click to expand...

Regarding your particular issue, I used to get that problem frequently, though (knock on wood) I have not seen it for months. That just might be luck and nothing else. It is DEFINITELY something associated with THEIR website. I could have 20 tabs open with no problem, but open a WU tab and >boom!< those warnings would come up. I would immediately keep hitting the back button and close the browser. I have not seen those in a while, but that is DEFINITELY something unique to WU. I think what's happening is that WU (as proven with their horrible decay) does not monitor who buys ads on their sites. Some of the ad providers might even have third parties paying for placement, and somehowsomeway a third-party is running code on your page to hijack your tab. It's inexcusable as far as I am concerned. That particular issue is the worst of the worst. They are allowing potentially criminal access to their own customers due to their neglect. For all you know, someone at WU is even in on the problem to make a profit, and their inept company is unaware.

As for my use, I use the web version from both my phone and my PC. I use both Chrome and Opera browsers on either device, and the problems occur with both. Also, the Scientific Forecaster Discussion has been unavailable for weeks. I only try to read it no more than a few times a week, but each time I get nothing (both "with abrreviations" and "without abbreviations"). It seems that WU's site maintenance has basically been abandoned! It is genuinely shocking to me. Why not sell the site to someone for very cheap who can at least put their passion into it and keep it running properly? Perhaps they have employee morale issues and attrition, but it is stunning to see how many problems there are **which did not exist in the past**.

I don't pay WU anything, so I can't complain as a subscribed customer, but I would pay if they made it as good as it used to be and didn't show ads. That will never happen, of course, because - hey - corporate attitudes rule. Almost zero corporate heads want that pure pay business model, they all want to push folks into apps so they can collect your information, and sell YOU as the product. I try to minimize that and only allow it as necessary (e.g., even connecting to the phone or data networks gives away personal data).

What's especially bizarre is that the site has been neglected yet it was not too long ago they added the Wundermap windstream feature that is a shiny geegaw for the masses. This choice makes no sense. The windstream might be useful for understanding horizontal convergence for severe weather prediction, but without an explanation of the field calculation, I don't trust it - especially since the local wind reports don't necessarily conform to the wind field. I would prefer just to look at isobars, but (I believe I mentioned earlier) I can rarely see the model data.

In the end, this site is done for. Their smarter and more ambitious employees are surely looking elsewhere for jobs, at least most of them. I have worked in plenty of companies to know when you see the signs. These issues are not just blips. Wunderground is going six feet underground or at least into a zombie state. I had started switching sites recently, but I got sidetracked due to emergency family issues and forgot which site(s) I was settling on. Now I have to revisit and reset my memory for whatever will be my new go-to site. I look forward to using some of the suggestions here. I do remember when NOAA had some good sites, but funding for public data presentation has specifically been attacked by corporate interests (mostly via the GOP) as they cried "privatization is better". If the funding and competence would be restored, NOAA/NWS could once again have some terrifically simple yet powerful tools available for the public.
 
IBM didn't buy them for the consumer business at all. I'm sure they'd just as soon that part go away.

IBM bought them to tie into their block chain logistics SAAS business as weather is a key component of both logistics and retail supply chain.
 
I don't think Dark Sky has any real competition for hyper-local weather these days.

Rich
 
Bruzote said:
Regarding your particular issue, I used to get that problem frequently, though (knock on wood) I have not seen it for months. That just might be luck and nothing else. It is DEFINITELY something associated with THEIR website. I could have 20 tabs open with no problem, but open a WU tab and >boom!< those warnings would come up. I would immediately keep hitting the back button and close the browser. I have not seen those in a while, but that is DEFINITELY something unique to WU. I think what's happening is that WU (as proven with their horrible decay) does not monitor who buys ads on their sites. Some of the ad providers might even have third parties paying for placement, and somehowsomeway a third-party is running code on your page to hijack your tab. It's inexcusable as far as I am concerned. That particular issue is the worst of the worst. They are allowing potentially criminal access to their own customers due to their neglect. For all you know, someone at WU is even in on the problem to make a profit, and their inept company is unaware.

As for my use, I use the web version from both my phone and my PC. I use both Chrome and Opera browsers on either device, and the problems occur with both. Also, the Scientific Forecaster Discussion has been unavailable for weeks. I only try to read it no more than a few times a week, but each time I get nothing (both "with abrreviations" and "without abbreviations"). It seems that WU's site maintenance has basically been abandoned! It is genuinely shocking to me. Why not sell the site to someone for very cheap who can at least put their passion into it and keep it running properly? Perhaps they have employee morale issues and attrition, but it is stunning to see how many problems there are **which did not exist in the past**.

I don't pay WU anything, so I can't complain as a subscribed customer, but I would pay if they made it as good as it used to be and didn't show ads. That will never happen, of course, because - hey - corporate attitudes rule. Almost zero corporate heads want that pure pay business model, they all want to push folks into apps so they can collect your information, and sell YOU as the product. I try to minimize that and only allow it as necessary (e.g., even connecting to the phone or data networks gives away personal data).

What's especially bizarre is that the site has been neglected yet it was not too long ago they added the Wundermap windstream feature that is a shiny geegaw for the masses. This choice makes no sense. The windstream might be useful for understanding horizontal convergence for severe weather prediction, but without an explanation of the field calculation, I don't trust it - especially since the local wind reports don't necessarily conform to the wind field. I would prefer just to look at isobars, but (I believe I mentioned earlier) I can rarely see the model data.

In the end, this site is done for. Their smarter and more ambitious employees are surely looking elsewhere for jobs, at least most of them. I have worked in plenty of companies to know when you see the signs. These issues are not just blips. Wunderground is going six feet underground or at least into a zombie state. I had started switching sites recently, but I got sidetracked due to emergency family issues and forgot which site(s) I was settling on. Now I have to revisit and reset my memory for whatever will be my new go-to site. I look forward to using some of the suggestions here. I do remember when NOAA had some good sites, but funding for public data presentation has specifically been attacked by corporate interests (mostly via the GOP) as they cried "privatization is better". If the funding and competence would be restored, NOAA/NWS could once again have some terrifically simple yet powerful tools available for the public.
Click to expand...

This weeks “John Oliver Last Week Tonight” episodes main story is NOAA and Trumps appointee to head it (former CEO of Accuweather, who’s family is still in the game) and it’s pretty scary.
 
I lots all respect for IBM when they bought a company whose products I relied on. The next release had a README.htm file in the distribution. Clicking on it told me for the release notes I needed to go to some IBM website and type some inscrutable sequence of numbers into the search field (the new IBM product number for the application). What part of "hypertext" does IBM not understand?
 
Bill Jennings said:
So IBM pays $2B for weather.com and wu and now guts it. I just don't get big companies doing things like this. How does it benefit the books? Tax write-offs?
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IBM bought it as part of their push in the supply chain business with Watson. They couldn't care about the consumer-facing stuff.

Why does it happen? Because a company pays, in this case, $2 billion, and expects a certain rate of return to pay that purchase price back. What they wanted was the forecasting part of the entity to feed big data efforts, and some B-B stuff through WSI. Strategically, they kept them out of the hands of a competitor & consolidated part of the market. Financially, by combining the two, they cut costs out (which is part of why there have been staff cuts), and because there are less competitors, the value of the data (and advertising) goes up.

Google (and other tech companies) have bought out companies only to shut them down once the intellectual property was extracted. They might take some tax loss, but they managed to cut costs & eliminated a potential competitor, which benefits profitability in the long run.

So you've got this, and then you have private equity that buys companies, leverages them sky high, cuts costs, and leads to bankruptcies. And then you have the corporate raiders like Carl Ichan.
 
Bill Jennings said:
Very nice! Do they have an app, or is it just web based?
Click to expand...
Windy has a version of this.

Fire up the app or website, then search for an airport using it's ICAO code (such as KDTO for my home dorm). Then look to the bottom of the results for the METEOGRAM.

If you use AeroWeather Plus app, it shows a Meteogram
 
Anyone know where Foreflight gets the data for their “MOS”? Is that a NWS product?
 
YooperMooney said:
Anyone know where Foreflight gets the data for their “MOS”? Is that a NWS product?
Click to expand...
LMGTFY: https://support.foreflight.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016432894-What-is-your-source-for-MOS-forecasts-

What is your source for MOS forecasts?
We use the hourly Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP) data for forecast periods up to 24 hours in the future, and the Global Forecast System MOS (also known as the MAV) product for forecasts out to 60 hours in the future, which updates every three hours.​

Also this December 14, 2014 blog post when they introduced MOS as a feature: ForeFlight Mobile Expands Forecast Weather Guidance with MOS
 
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