textual wx data from nws

[GeorgeC]

I imagine I'm not the first to stumble upon this, but I thought I'd share.

I've been in the habit of reading the area forecast discussion. When I drill into the AFD from weather.gov, however, the text is surrounded by bloated html window dressing, which is particularly annoying for mobile users. Yes, I already foresee having the "when I was your age, I had to download at 1200 *bits* per second, and I liked it!" conversation with my son.

Anyway. URLs like

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/LWX/AFDLWX
or
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/LWX/ZFPLWX

spit out pure unadulterated ASCII, as God intended. Insert your favorite local weather station and bookmark 'em on your phone, browse the whole tree of textual weather products, or pipe through a speech synth to recreate that DECtalk feel in the comfort of your own home.

 

[RV10flyer]

I read the foreast discussion before looking at any wx graphics. Depending on which direction our wx is coming from, I may read more than one. I use an I-pad and I-phone. I usually just hit "Text Only".