As I prepared my previous column “Our fascination with weather extends to apps and websites,” it became apparent that there are many favourite weather applications and sites that people turn to. Certainly, many more than can be covered in a single article. Here, then, is a follow-up in which we look at several weather websites, as opposed to the coverage in the first column of mobile apps such as Apple Weather, YR, Weerplaza, Weather Channel, and Weather Network.
This past summer, as wildfires consumed large parts of B.C., and elsewhere in North America, many of us turned to firesmoke.ca, a Canadian website portal for information about wildland fire weather and smoke. This site provides high-resolution, interactive forecasts of hourly, daily average and daily maximum concentrations of PM2.5 smoke particles (one measure of particulate pollution) at ground level from wildfires.
Firesmoke.ca was developed by the Weather Forecast Research Team at the University of British Columbia and produces research forecasts with support from multiple agencies. Their tools and data serve professionals in the air quality, health & safety, emergency management, and science & research communities, as well as the public. To be sure, the mapping produced by this site is based on modelling projections and actual conditions may vary from those forecasted. Nonetheless, I, for one, felt compelled to look at the site’s projections about once a day throughout our summer. The site’s imagery also began to appear on nightly TV news segments.
Another website that has become quite popular here, particularly when storm season rolls around in the autumn, is Windy.tv, which also operates as windy.com. This site is feature-dense, providing all sorts of detailed overlays for the basic data, a mapping of surface winds based on modelling drawn from the distribution of high and low-pressure systems across the globe.
As for firesmoke.ca, Windy provides projections for several days out from the current time. It can be quite mesmerizing to see the current wind conditions at various locations, both in terms of average wind speed and maximum gusts. It is fascinating to see how wind conditions vary across the Salish Sea during a storm and to see where and when BC Ferries might be cancelling sailings.
Some snowbird readers may have turned to Windy to follow Hurricane Lidia as it approached Puerto Vallarta. Although Windy also exists as a mobile app, it really shines on the desktop display. A compromise might be on a tablet screen.
A Windy variant is the site earth.nullschool.net, described as a visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers, updated every three hours. The interface is spartan but there is a tremendous amount of data packed into this fascinating website. Start by clicking on “earth” in the lower left and then experimenting with the mode and projection options. Drag to rotate the view of Earth. Scroll or two-finger drag to zoom in or out.
If highly technical weather data appeals to you, then spotwx.com may be a site you enjoy perusing. Actually, I say “highly technical” but in fact Spotwx is designed to provide hyper-local forecasts while showing the data used to arrive at those projections.
Here’s a description from the creator of Spotwx, whose day job is working for the Manitoba Wildfire Service. “It’s designed as a spot weather forecasting tool. There’s no shortage of sites out there, both government and private, which display weather maps from various models. However, getting the actual numbers and visualizations required for a quick spot forecast can be a frustrating task. Spotwx was created to fill that void.”
We shouldn’t forget our own government agency, Environment and Climate Change Canada (search for ECCC), which has a multi-faceted site described through a mandate on the main page as charged with “Protecting and conserving our natural heritage, predicting weather and environmental conditions, preventing and managing pollution, promoting clean growth and a sustainable environment for present and future generations.” Through the ECCC portal, you can quickly get to local, regional, and national forecasts (or go directly through weather.gc.ca), and to specialty forecasts, for example, for astronomers or for fishers.
However, I couldn’t easily find a space weather section. This is a common problem with government sites as ministries are renamed and divisions move from one ministry to another. Canada has an excellent space weather division, but it is maintained by Natural Resources Canada. Look for it directly at spaceweather.gc.ca.
As with apps, there is no shortage of weather-related websites. These are only a few. That leaves more for a future column in which perhaps we will also look at backyard weather stations.
Follow me on Facebook (facebook.com/PeterVogelCA), or on Twitter (@PeterVogel)