Hi all,
A beta of our new weather site is now available at beta.wx.photoephemeris.com.
Highlights
- Supports multiple weather models (Arome France HD, ARPEGE Europe, ECMWF, GFS, HRRR, Met Office UKV, RAP)
- Frequent updates (e.g. hourly for HRRR and RAP)
- Multiple forecast runs available for comparison purposes
- Initial selection of forecast layers
Why use this?
There are a gazillion weather sites already out there that work very well. Why are we bothering to do this?
The main driver arose from some frustrations I had with other weather services:
- Non-interactive maps: many sites present static maps which are often frustrating to use and donāt let you zoom in on areas of interest
- No animation over time: few sites animate smoothly over time with interpolation, and but the interpolation can help your ability interpret weather trends
- Hard to āreadā cloud forecasts: often you canāt see multiple layers, or if you can, differentiating between low/med/high cloud is tricky. Photographers need a reliable āreadā on cloud layering
- Lack of Sun and Moon context: we often care about the weather at the times of sun/moon rise or set
- Time zone uncertainty: if youāre not busy trying to reverse engineer UTC into your local time zone, you may still be left wondering whether the displayed time is in your computerās time zone or the time zone at a location shown on the map.
- Convenience: wouldnāt it be nice to be able move seamlessly from your shot planning in the web app to the same map view for weather data with the same time and date selected?
This initial beta hopefully begins to address some of these points and lays the foundation for adding much more.
How can I use the site?
Open beta.wx.photoephemeris.com in your desktop browser (mobile support is coming soon).
If youāre not already signed into app.photoephemeris.com, youāll be prompted to do so: sign in and youāll be redirected back to the weather page.
From there, you can choose your weather model, forecast run and forecast layer using the controls on the right of the page (click the āside panelā button at the lower right to open this if required). Then you can scroll through time using the interactive Sun/Moon chart at the below the map.
Non-PRO users can select the ECMWF and GFS models. PRO subscribers can choose from any available model. All weather functionality will be included in the PRO subscription at no additional charge.
Hereās an over of the basic controls:
Controls
- Blending: when enabled, the map shows an interpolated blend of two forecasts, e.g. if you choose 12:45pm with blending enabled, youāll see 25% of the 12pm forecast and 75% of the 1pm forecast. If disabled, youād see only the 12pm forecast. This works very well for layers such as temperature, but you may see āsmearingā for cloud and smoke layers (anything that is advective) - however, the smearing animation can help you visually intuit how things are evolving during the hour.
- Preloading: when enabled, the app will pre-request an additional hour before and after the displayed times so that when you adjust the selected time, the tiles are ready and preloaded. This consumes additional bandwidth, but provides a smoother animation experience. We suggest leaving this disabled on slower connections or older computers.
- Day/night terminator: this shows the approximate line of sunrise/sunset across the globe - very useful when evaluating weather at these times
- Lunar day/night terminator: the same, but for the Moon. Note: the dark are corresponds to when the Moon is set - it can be easy to mix this up. Refer to the Sun/Moon altitude chart if youāre unsure what youāre looking at!
You can adjust the selected time of day by clicking and dragging left or right on the time chart below the map. The span of the time chart spans all available models and forecast runs. The hours covered by the selected model and run are highlighted in yellow:
Make sure you select times that are within the coverage of the model and run you choose!
Itās a BETA!
Remember - this is a beta, so there will undoubtedly be issues. If you spot a problem, please let me know!
Also, please post your comments, feedback, suggestions, and questions too. Iāll be updating the beta site regularly, so expect things to evolve as we go.
If the forecasts are slow to load, it could be because youāre the first person to view the data and the āfirst pullā is always a little slower. The more people who view the data, the faster it will get for everyone, via the wonders of layer caching content delivery networks!
Iāll post more highlighting forecast models and layers that I think will be of particular interest to photographers.