WSG Newsletter:
Let It Snow - Weather Report
Issue: December 13, 2002
Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
We might say, “let it snow” but we don’t mean it – not
if it means we can't get home for the holidays because of the weather. December
is a time when weather takes on an extra importance. Are the roads clear? Is
there a storm coming? Are planes flying? Is the airport open? Will Santa make
it? What’s the current temperature on the tropical island I wish I were
escaping to?
You could turn on the television for the Weather Channel or check your
newspaper, but for current quick updates, the Web has it. Check road conditions
for your area, find out about flights, get the weather map and a 5-day
forecast, be alerted by email or on your PDA. And for real weather buffs and
anyone in need of chatter for the holiday parties, check the almanac for
predictions or pick up weather facts to astound your friends. What about that
snowstorm in Saskatchewan in 1947 that buried a train a kilometer long in snow
drifts?
[More Severe Winter Weather Events from Environment Canada
www.mb.ec.gc.ca/air/wintersevere/events.en.html]
This newsletter picks out a few good sources about the weather with a bias
to those covering Canada.
Weather Network
Canadians will want to stay close to the Weather Network. This service comes
from Pelmorex Media Inc based in Mississauga, Ontario, the “leading
private sector weather information provider”. The Weather Network
describes itself as “Canada's only 24-hour specialty channel devoted to
Canadians' favourite topic of conversation -- the weather.”
www.theweathernetwork.com
En français, il y a MétéoMédia with full weather
news in French and an email service (MétéoDirect) for updates.
www.meteomedia.com
An animated map shows weather conditions across Canada. Click on a red dot
to zoom into an area and get the specifics on temperature, precipitation,
sunrise and sunset, and forecast. A National Audio Summary reports on
conditions from west to east noting weather warnings and air quality alerts -
even in the winter. There are also several weather maps to show current and
projected conditions, precipitation, temperature, humidex (a Canadian
innovation to give a unique measure to the heat and humidity of a day), wind
speed, and cloud cover.
It is easy to check Highway Conditions for individual highways in all
provinces. Information is obtained from the provincial ministries of
transportation.
Ski and snow reports are also at hand. Find the province or find the resort
to check snow conditions and number of runs open.
But the Canadian winter also means influenza – and the Weather Network
covers that too with intermittent reports obtained from the provincial
ministries of health.
For those wistful for palm trees and beach, RBC Insurance sponsors the
sections on Vacation spots and Traveller’s Information.
Environment Canada
The Weather Office at Environment Canada is a prime supplier of weather
information to Canadian sites including the Weather Network and CBC.ca.
weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/canada_e.html (also in French).
www.cbc.ca/weather/
There are some additional offerings here that make it a good stop.
Environment Canada issues severe weather warnings and watches and advisories at
this site with details about place and conditions. There are also reports for
Marine Weather (for lakes and ocean coats) and Aviation Weather – with the
option to file a flight plan.
For the longer view the Weather Office has Seasonal Forecasts out one year
in quarterly segments. For December 2002, Environment Canada is predicting
lower than normal temperatures for Ontario and Quebec and a portion of the
Atlantic Provinces, and warmer than normal for everywhere else.
Widening interests further, the Green Lane, as Environment Canada’s web
site is called, issues a free online newsletter – EnviroZine. This takes up issues of climate
change and environmental activism while also peppering each issue with weather
trivia. The website has an “on this day” entry everyday with a news
from the past about weather conditions.
www.ec.gc.ca/envirozine/english/home_e.cfm
Weather Channel
Weather.com is the
Weather Channel on the Web. It is the service used by most portals such as
MyWay, Excite, Yahoo and MSN.
Weather.com is a giant of a weather site. US residents can customize it to
show weather conditions and news for their zip code. Weather devotees will be
interested in setting up my.weather.com with forecasts for the local area,
news, maps, and information on selected cities around the world.
The Weather.com Notify service will send severe weather alerts to
subscribers by voice mail, email, or wireless – for $49.99 / year –
good for people living in areas troubled by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and
other extreme conditions. For people glued to their desktop computer there is
Desktop Weather, a software package delivering continuous updates to the
systems tray. This and other tools are listed under Weather Tools.
On December 3, 2002, as the US Eastern Seaboard braced itself for big winter
storms, 4.9 million people checked in with weather.com, viewing about 10 pages
each.
Weather.com goes well beyond the 5-day forecast. It can advise on how
weather will affect health with information on risk of asthma attacks from
elevated pollen levels, need for skin protection, wet conditions aggravating
arthritis. In the recreation department, gardeners, golfers, and skiers get
their time. The Travel section has a clickable map for road conditions across
the US and hourly departure and arrival forecasts for 150 U.S. airports.
Internationally, Weather.com has sites for Brazil, France, Germany, Latin
America, and the UK. It covers Canadian cities but easiest access is through
Yahoo Canada at ca.weather.yahoo.com/.
Others
Yahoo.com (weather.yahoo.com/) has more bluster than Yahoo Canada. There
are the breaking news video broadcasts from AccuWeather.com, news stories from
weather.com, and quick lookup by zip code or city. MyYahoo users will see the
weather conditions for their picks, and can also use MyAlerts to receive emails
on weather changes. But there are more pop-ups and crawl-overs at Yahoo than
snowflakes on Mount Baker (Mount Baker, Washington, holds the World Record for
seasonal snowfall.)
Lycos uses Custom Weather from San Francisco (weather.lycos.com). This
service can quickly interpret where you are in North America and give a local
forecast with Airport Conditions, Astronomy Forecast, and some Historical
Climate Data. It is much easier to search at Lycos Weather for conditions in
other countries than at Weather.com and its partners. Lycos will recognize
Martinique in the Caribbean whereas Weather.com has no matches.
Wunderground.com
serves the USA and the World. Appealing features are the many Map Types:
windchill, heat index, wind, visibility, snow and others, as well as health
maps for UV, pollen, and flu. Users can add cities or weather stations to a
favourites list. There is a Canadian version at
www.canadianweather.com.
“Best weather on the Web” is the slogan at Accuweather.com
(www.accuweather.com).
Fire up the multimedia players when you come to this site. It is rich in
weather videos, streaming news, iSight web cams, radar images, and satellite
views. There is reasonable access to forecasts for places in other parts of the
world, and the Canada page supports searching by postal code, or city /
province.
Some in the US may prefer to use the National Weather Service from
NOAA. It's a full weather information site with forecasts, warnings, maps
and analysis - an educational site whose motto is "working together to
save lives".
www.nws.noaa.gov/
World
While most of these sites have links to international weather sites,
CNN’s weather page (www.cnn.com/WEATHER/) is more world than US, showing weather
maps on the main page and temperatures in international cities.
USA Today has a helpful page (www.usatoday.com/weather/worldwea.htm) for watches and
warnings on tropical storms, erupting volcanoes, earthquakes and other
disasters.
People in the UK will prefer to start with the BBC Weather page (www.bbc.co.uk/weather/)
where there are also almanac entries, the year so far, webcams and travel
spots.
Back to Snow
But to get back to snow, for people who really love the white stuff and
would go anywhere to shovel and ski, Snow-forecast.com (www.snow-forecast.com) is
the site. It has tools for checking snow conditions around the world (on
December 12 there was rain in Iraq and snow in Turkey). Naturally the site has
snow reports and forecasts for ski resorts around the world. Members of this
site get more information.
Almanacs
The Farmers’ Almanac was first published in 1818 and is still
sold everywhere in the United States and Canada. The website has a sampling of
its content including the current as well as next month's Farmers' Almanac
Zoned Weather Forecasts. Only buyers of the print edition see the full 16
months.
www.farmersalmanac.com
Lastly, there is Mitchell Brown, who must love weather in Canada because he
has created a Canadian Weather Almanac with weather records, weather quotes,
weather glossary and much else to while away our time as we sing “let it
snow, let it snow”.
members.tripod.com/~MitchellBrown/almanac/
Check List:
|
Let It Snow, Let It Snow,
Let It Snow
Weather Links