Could some of you weather gurus/web designers produce a very useful website? Call it Where is the Southerly? Scrape BoM data and drop it onto a map. Maybe some indication of how fast the change is travelling and a forecast of when it will hit a particular spot. Current conditions in Sydney have had no effect on this stroke of genius.
Ha. Ventusky maps it pretty accurately. It mapped the southerly around Jervis Bay @ 5pm and sure enough BOM AWS has southerly through at ~5pm. This said it says the Southerly should be through Sydney City around ~8:45pm and 25-35km/h in strength.
If you want real time BOM data chucked into a chart, look here at Stormcast. http://stormcast.com.au/stormcast.html?ops=bom:::vic:bomwindgustkm:null:0#sc As for a new website, there isn't much of a market for it here. We have Stormcast and Weatherzone, two major private weather sites for Aus is really enough.
It is a question that most of the east coast south of Queensland asks every week in summer. They don't want to interpret charts.
That's an easy solution, listen to Jane Bunn or the ABC's Graham Creed or read the BOM's forecast on the app.
Can you give me Mr Creed's or Ms Bunn's phone numbers? And if the BoM's app or website tells me I haven't found where.
You are all telling me where I can find the information. Well doh. None of these sites pop up if I search the obvious string "when will the southerly arrive"?
Google bookmarks do it for me... perhaps you could just write it in a post and within minutes I or someone else here could tell you.
I just look down the coast at the various AWS and look at temp and wind data. And from there watch it progess up the coast.
You are all telling me where I can find the information. Well doh. None of these sites pop up if I search the obvious string "when will the southerly arrive"?
Maybe because that string takes more context to interpret than Google can reasonably assume. Computers are not people. People can more easily assume a correct context than computers can. People and computers have different strengths.
Do you really think I didn't google that before I posted my answer? It gives me weather results for Sydney. But I'm in Perth. Oh well. So much for assuming context.
Given... Lightning strikes reach the ground on Earth as much as 8 million times per day or 100 times per second, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory. Out of all the lightning strikes in the world, the United States accounts for about 20 million of the total number of lightning strikes each year. How the F would a computersearch engine be able to figure our which southerly you are referring to.
No, you're not a genius. So Google understands "southerly" often (though not always) has something to do with weather. But that's about it. You get anything that has something to do with weather and Perth. The lead result is 4 day old news. The second is for Sydney. So much for your "genius" idea. Those search results are even less useful than simply doing the more generic search for "weather Perth". Above the "fold": Below:
So it seems that google is not very good at understanding "southerly". I know!!! Let's set up a separate web site or app that lets people know when they can expect the southerly!!!! I am a genius!!!!!
If you solve the NLP* problems that are preventing that from happening then I'll give you the genius bit and then some. Till then I'll give you "****ing uninformed stupid". * If you're so smart about this you don't need me to tell you what that is.
I reckon the problem is that google can't find a site that doesn't yet exist. Quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed. There is also an issue of our favourite marsupial having some sort of tanty. I always thought that wombats were probably a bit bad tempered.
Ms Bunn has a facebook page she has a fan club which also has a facebook page the latter seems to be more concerned with her physical attributes
so so mauch wrong about the comments on her page. Seems to either tolerate it and somewhat court it...any publicity is good publicity ?
Not seeing your "genius" is having a tanty? Book me in as the tanty expert then! Never leave us Legs, the entertainment is too good!
"When will the southerly arrive" is as sensible as "when will it stop raining", " when will it get hot" and a host of other questions. Either a site needs to anticipate & hard code all these possibilities in advance or you need natural language processing & be able to relate that to the weather models. That's a non trivial task. So no, I don't think I am over cooking it.
If you combine either of those questions with geo-location which is pretty much everywhere now, there is plenty of context for a search.
Not by much. But either way, it doesn't go close to what Legs is asking for. Think how many different ways his question could be asked and you're firmly in the domain of NLP. Then you have to translate that question to some form you can query your weather model. It's a non trivial exercise.
But if you have my proposed website or app you don't have to ask any question. I doubt you even understand my idea.
one thing I have learnt through very similar questions I have asked to those in IT, is that what you want is likely to not be something enough others want in order to make it feasible. And no one is going to make a southerly buster website for charity purposes Another thing though legs, I am a bit jealous of your retirement boredom! (totally hammered this week with not enough hours in the day syndrome )
on another note got to love the thread title its like saying please do this because I aint got faith in the idea and please go ahead and steal it if its worth anything!
Seems nobody has understood it. Try describing it in a bit more detail. Are you only interested in "southerly" weather fronts? How far in advance do you want notice? How precise do you expect the timing to be? What if there isn't a "southerly" in the forecast for the next day or two; do you want it to say "nothing to see here" or give you the expected conditions? Or current obs? Do you still want it to give you multi-day forecasts? Cloud cover? UV index? There are lots of questions people ask about the weather. The more data the user interface tries to pack in the harder it is to see the data clearly. So presenting data such that you can see what you want without having to ask anything is complicated.
