NOAA has changed the Radar Format Again! Reply to topic

A heads up to those of you in the USA using WeatherHarvest. NOAA has again changed their radar image display system to an incompatible Java-based one. The result is that the Latest radar images still work with my original hack, but none of the Loops do.

Check my site for the gory details, but it appears that the files we want are still available (at least for now) under different filenames and in a different folder.

The 2 line patch to the wh_radar.php file from my original hack is on my site in the WeatherHarvest forum.

Note that there may be a slight loss of precision on the storm images: NOAA has also changed their projection to NAD 1983 with a potential result of a slight E-W widening of the image particularly to the north of the projection. But it's probably not that bad at the size images we use - especially considering the latest image is a typical 30 minutes delayed.

How inconsiderate of them, again.

I was starting to think my problem was as a result of changing hosts and having to setup my directory permissions different to what I had before.

Thanks for the info - I'll update WH when I get some time

Phoenix wrote

How inconsiderate of them, again.

Looking at local TV weather forecasts during this recent storm - when they are showing long enough shots to get a good look - it appears that they are responding to local TV station needs. A lot of which appear to have switched to "free" sources for their data. A direct result of the Weather Channel Cable company and Microshaft buying up all other sources no doubt. And I guess that *is* the class of users who need images in a certain projection and don't have access to GIS systems, or at least don't know how to use them.

But it would have been so easy for NOAA to make it backward compatible this time.

Looked into their stated distortion due to change in projection. I was wrong before, it does NOT affect the loop images as we're still using the old style one for loop. But the non-loop images are just slightly wider than the loop ones, so that's where the error is. You can just see it if you track the image width while you change from latest to loop and back.

Let me know when/if you update it, so that I can annotate the appropriate revisions on the patch on my site. TIA.