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Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

WunderMap Displays Past and Present Weather Information

Ever wondered if it was that cold or hot last year as it is this year? Then WunderMap might be your go to weather application, as it offers to take you on a ride back in weather history. All you need to do to get started is to key in a location that you want weather information for. The app displays a list of suggestions if it is not immediately clear which location you are looking for. Once you hit enter or select one of the suggestions from the menu, you will see the app zoom in on the selected location.

weather report

You will notice immediately that WunderMap uses Google Maps as the underlying mapping service. The zoomed in map displays weather station information by default. This includes the temperature and wind strength and direction, with options to switch to dew point / humidity or precipitation instead. A click on a weather station displays all available information, plus forecasts.

weather station

Additional weather related information are selectable on the right. From severe weather and satellite imagery to webcams, traffic or storm reports. All that it takes to enable the new layers is to check an item to have it displayed on the map. Most offer options to change data sources or display different kinds of information on the map.

las-vegas

One interesting option is available with a click on the clock icon next to the selected location. Here you can go back in time (hour, day, month or year) for information about the weather location at a specific date and time in history.

You can furthermore select future dates (in the day range) to see weather forecasts on the map.

The different layers, and the ability to go back in time, make WunderMap an interesting service. It is usually not something that you would go to to get a weather report though. The service has its specialized uses, you can for instance pull past data from holiday locations to see how the weather conditions have been during your planned stay.

Some layers are only available if you are displaying a location in the United States. You can check out Wundermap here.



Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Rain Alarm, Receive Precipitation Warnings In Chrome

The Chrome extension Rain Alarm provides users with up to date precipitation warnings. The extension adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar upon installation that acts as a warning indicator, as it changes if it needs to inform the user about local weather warnings. The icon itself is rather small and definitely not the best notification option. Better than that icon is the built-in notifier that displays a small notification message in the operating system whenever the user needs to be notified.

The notification displays information about the precipitation, e.g. snow fall or rain, as well as its reach and strength.

rain alarm

A click opens the rain alarm website with a Google Maps view of the selected location. Here you find precipitation data over time, a local weather map so to speak. You can zoom in and out of the map which seems to be completely independent of the browser extension. Users who just want to use rain alarm this way can open the website to do just that.

precipitation

The website offers precipitation data of the last two hours. You can go back or forward in time to see the intensity at a specific period in time.

The Rain Alarm options can be used to change the location for the weather forecasts and warnings automatically or manually. There is unfortunately no option to use multiple profiles for different locations in the world. Only one location can be active at a time.

rain alarm options

Text notifications can be turned off, and sound notifications turned on here as well. Other options include changing the search radius and interval, the sensitivity which defines when alarms get triggered automatically, the time format and units of measurement.

Rain Alarm can be a handy extension for Chrome users who need to be in the known all the time. It is not a full blown weather extension though, but if precipitation is what you want, then this is what you get.

Are you using weather services or weather extensions? Let me know in the comments.


© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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