I'm rather obsessed with the Weather Underground Web site since being re-introduced to it recently. The site organizes weather data better than other weather Web sites like The Weather Channel's site (www.weather.com), Accuweather and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Because of a massive network of local weather observers, it also provides more localized data. For example, right now the temperature at 'Uptown' is 34.5 degrees according to Underground. When I enter '60640' into a Weather.com Gold search, the temperature is stated as 30 degrees. Weather.com is using data from either Midway Airport or O'Hare Airport. Both are several miles from here and farther inland. Weather Underground's data is coming from someone near the intersection of Lawrence and Sheridan.
Previously, I would visit each of the aforementioned sites for different purposes. NOAA's to check out the Illinois roundup, Accuweather's for the past 24 hours' temps and weather.com for current conditions and forecasts. Weather Underground includes all of this information on one page, including the daily extremes for the entire state.
I didn't realize it until recently, but Weather Underground was the weather Web site I checked in the mid-1990s on a text-based Internet browser. It started at the University of Michigan and now is its own company. It's a true Web pioneer that has not gone the way of Netscape or usenets!
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2 comments:
I too am a weather underground obsessor. I think my 48104 zip code bookmark is one my most heavily used pages. It makes weather.com look sad and primitive!
Ah, you are an Ann Arbor Internet weather purist. I like the page preferences and the Wunder photo galleries, too. I also just tried out the Weather Radio function, which is somewhat surreal and entertaining.
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