Wayne's Weather Watcher Help

Wayne's Weather Watcher is designed to provide weather information in the United States of America. Though temperature data is available around the world, data sources for radar and weather alerts outside the USA are not available in this application.

Wayne's Weather Watcher (as of v2.0.11) uses the W3C HTML5 standard method for asking the user for their location in order to center the map more accurately. Note that this location information is not used for any other purpose and is not retained. You can choose to Allow or Disallow the request for your location as the map will still draw using the "best guess" from your IP address whenever possible. You can read about how geo-location works at Mozilla's website (even if you're not using Mozilla FireFox, this writeup is very good): http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/.

In order to select a specific location and zoom level to which the map should open automatically, use the location= and zoom= in the query string of the URL. For example, to see a map centered at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) by default, use this URL: http://www.waynesweatherwatcher.com/map/?location=LAX. Adding the zoom= parameter allows you to choose the zoom level. Zoom level 20 is the closest in. Zoom level 8 provides and excellent overview of the area. In this example, the map is zoomed to level 8 in Washington DC: http://www.waynesweatherwatcher.com/map/?location=Washington DC&zoom=8

Layers show various pieces of weather relevant data. Each is explained below.

Shows the current doppler radar images.

Shows an animated loop of the most recent radar images.

Shows an animated loop of the last 7 satellite photos, using the infrared satellite photography. Works 24 hours/day.

Shows an animated loop of the last 7 satellite photos, using visible satellite photography. Only works during daylight hours in the zone photographed.

Displays an overlay of polygons as published by the National Weather Service for severe weather ONLY. This included Flash Flood Warnings, Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, and Tornado Warnings. Refreshed approximately every 90 seconds.

Displays an overlay of polygons as published by the National Weather Service for all watches, warnings, and advisories. Refreshed approximately every 5 minutes.

Displays a layer indicating the predicted path of tropical cyclones (tropical storms and hurricanes) from the National Hurricane Center.

Displays weather data from specific weather stations throughout the world. Click on the marker to see details, or change the "type" option to display Wind, Gusts, or Rain rather than Temperature data.

Determines what happens when you click the map.

Warnings

If set to "Warnings", the map will be queried for weather alerts at the area you clicked and an info window will display with the warning text, if any.

Forecast

If set to "Forecast" a new window will open with the weather forecast data for that area from the National Weather Service.

This option allows you to configure the opacity of each layer displayed. This allows you to customize the appearance of the map and when combined with the preferences feature, it will return to that configuration the next time you reload the map.

This option allows you to set or clear the map configuration that is used when you return to the site. For example, if you always want to see "All Weather Alerts" and "Tropical Cyclone Tracks" when you reload the map, then turn those layers on and then click the "Set" button to set a cookie on your browser that returns to the settings you have configured. Marker visibility, layers displayed and layer opacity are included in the preferences. By clicking "Clear" you will remove those preferences and the next time you load the map, it will go back to the default configuration.

Click this option to return the map to the default location and zoom. The default location is determined via an estimate of your location using the IP address of your computer. It is an estimate only, using Google's geolocation function. It is not an exact position but should usually be within 100 miles or less. If the geolocation is not able to estimate your location, the map will default to Zoom Level 4 and will be centered in the middle of the USA.

Displays the change log indicating recent changes and other information.