Weather layers for OpenStreeMap

General talk
1

Hi all!
Let me introduce OpenWeatherMap.org, a new garage project.
Until now only Yandex has had a weather layer and Google recently has launched the same layer. But there was nothing for OpenStreetMap.

From now on the OpenWeatherMap.org is weather layer for OpenStreetMap. Even two layers. Both of them are on alfa stage temporary.

  1. The first layer displays data from weather stations all around the world.
    Now there are more than 20,000 active stations that sent the weather data at least once per hour with delay less then 3 hour. The layer displays only the most recent data. The maximum delay is less than 3 hours. The majority of stations have delay up to 10 minutes. http://openweathermap.org/?zoom=9&lat=6732337.05415&lon=-12100.89611&layers=BTFT

  2. The second layer displays data of current weather in the cities.
    Because the most stations are located outside the city to get the weather inside you need to do some interpolation of the measured data. We do it using online data received from the weather stations and on the basis of the global meteorological forecasts calculated by the GFS model.
    http://openweathermap.org/?zoom=5&lat=5870433.12333&lon=2113154.23804&layers=BFTT

What are the sources of data?

  1. Airport weather stations
  2. Hams of the APRS network
  3. Home-made weather stations
    A little later it will be a few more sources.

How to connect?
We have made a small class for OpenLayer.
Details are here: http://openweathermap.org/example

Anyway all data are available via JSON requests and can be easily integrated into any other engine.

PS
We are not sure if JSON is a perfect method for layer downloading. Now we are thinking about probably more appropriate way by raster tiles generating.
May be someone can suggest a situation in which the tiles will be easier to use?

PPS
Current hosting is weak a bit. Please apologies if it slows down. We are fixing this problem currently.

PPPS
Plans … a lot of them … a heap of them!

If you are interested in this project and would like to join us please contact us. We also will appreciate all your comments!

Wish you a good weather!

2

Excellent! That’s definitely something useful.

IMO JSON is perfect, it allows to use weather data in vector maps as well or to be processed in other ways.

BTW isn’t the wind direction not available or not shown on the weather map?

3

We are glad to inform you about several essential updates in OpenWeatherMap service.
Due to getting data from Environment Canada we have managed to create several new weather layers. Its precipitations, clouds, wind, humidity and many others. All these data are processed by sophisticated servers in Canada, and result is available for everybody. The data can be received as WMS or as a layer for OpenLayers. Moreover we have created layer of metro radars but it available only for US and Canada.

Link to service with new layers:
http://openweathermap.org

Extra layers:
http://openweathermap.org/wiki/Models/GDPRS

About models:
http://openweathermap.org/wiki/Models

OpenWeatherMap Wiki:
http://openweathermap.org/wiki/Main_Page
Please join our Weather Wiki and add any information concerned weather!

By the way in OpenWeatherMap we use standard OSM map but it seems to be not appropriated as background for weather display. We think that is no need in such details like houses. It better should be more shadowed and have detailed geographic relief.
We have an idea to install mapnik and OSM into postgis but style adjustment seems to be rather complicated task. Is there anybody who can help us to solve this problem? And do you have any idea how weather map should be look like?

4

Have a look at the examples at http://maperitive.net

Ste.