New Feature - User-defined Weather Watch

[Just A Clay Pot]

Now available to all members--a weather watcher that will alert you of any warnings for your area.

Once set up, any warnings will make a "bug" appear on your browser:



This should provide vital information to folks not watching TV or listening to a radio.

To set it up, click on your User Control Panel link:



Click on the Profile Tab:



Click on the "Click HERE to edit location/turn on or off" link.  



This will make a popup box appear (make sure if you use a popup blocker that ETRT has permission to open popups.)



On the top of the popup will be shown the location you have currently selected ("None Selected" will be shown to people first setting it up) and if it is turned ON or Off (ON gives alerts, OFF ignores them.)

Below that, there is first a dropbox that has all available U.S. counties/parishes/islands/major city blocks.  Click on the list scroll bar or button (depending on your browser), and find the area you wish to monitor.  Click it, and the list should shrink back to a single line showing your selection.

Next, below the dropbox is a couple of radio buttons that turn the watcher on or off.  It defaults to "ON", so just leave it alone.

Press the "Submit" button.

If all has gone well, you should get a new display inside the popup box that looks like this:



If you should get an error message instead, please send me a PM with the error number it gives you.

Otherwise, click on the "Close this window" link, and the popup will go away.

At this point, the server is watching the weather for you!  

One other note:  When the bug appears on your screen, it has a link on it that will open a new browser window to the National Alert Map at the National Weather Service.  This will let you go immediately to find what is happening in your area.

If you have any questions or problems, please let me know.



P.S.  Remember--this is checked/updated with each refresh of the page.  If it is just sitting there, it won't check for warnings.  So, if you are just sitting idle on the site, be sure to click the "Index" link now and then, just to keep the watcher updated.

[willow]

I set mine up. All went smoothly. If I can do it, ANYONE can    Thanks Stu!

[Just A Clay Pot]

   

Nicely done!

[Tom67X]

Trè Cool.

[crazy-cajun]

If you have any questions or problems, please let me know.

Why is the sky blue, why is the grass green, why do we park on drive ways and drive on park ways?

Will set mine up and get back atcha. Be careful what you ask for, there are crazy people out there who will take you literally.    

[crazy-cajun]

Ok, done dilly illy. Was surprise that for my area it did not list major cities in my area. Did you select the list or just pull it off the NWS?

[Just A Clay Pot]

Used the FIPS 6-4 listing from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.  It is the source for the listing used by NWS, USPS and so forth.  It should be just to the county level--not sure why it includes some bigger standalone cities, and not others.  But, who can figure out why the government does what it does.  



But, the code uses the actual FIPS codes to determine which area has what weather.  Only at the final display does it convert the FIPS to County, State using a dedicated database here at ETRT.

At some point, I'd like to have an "advanced mode" that would allow monitoring more than just one FIPS...maybe even allow regional and/or state level.  I'm also still trying to find an easy to use source for solar events (all I've seen so far have been seriously messy to deal with at a code level )

[Rae]

This is neat.  Thanks Stu.  

[crazy-cajun]

Well that clears it up like a muddy wash rag....just joking. It does explain it clearly. In some cases a single large city is a single county.

Good luck on finding a good source for the space weather. That will be nice but if it means code that looks like over cooked scrambled eggs, maybe better to lay off of it.

[Just A Clay Pot]

Advanced mode now available - watch multiple counties, or even entire states.

If you can set up the Simple mode, this is no biggie.

When you open the popup as described in the previous posts, you'll notice there is a small link at the bottom called "Switch to Advanced Mode."  Click it, and a new set of controls will appear inside the popup.

The first difference is the area that shows your current watch selections is now a box.  This area will let you scroll through your currently selected areas (unlike the simple mode which just displays the one chosen area.)

The second difference is the addition of a box below the dropdown listing of counties/parishes/ect.  This is a window that shows your new selections as you add them.

To add areas, select your choice using the dropdown box (same as before.)  When your area is selected, click the "Add" button.  You'll see the choice appear in the box we just talked about.

Keep adding more selections, using this same proceedure.

When done, click "Submit."

That's it!

If at any time you decide that you don't want to make changes, just close the popup.  Until it tells you your changes have been saved, you can exit without anything being done.

I would recommend not putting in more than 6-8 targets total, just so it doesn't try to bog down your browser.

Also, in advanced mode, you'll notice you can add filters for entire states (i.e. All Arkansas, All Wyoming, etc.)  This might be useful if you are wanting to watch smaller states, or if there are large numbers of counties in a state that you want to track.  One search for the state will go faster than 8 individual searches by county.

Color coding is now active for the following warnings:

Warning! Evacuate Immediately.
Tsunami
Tornado
Thunderstorm
Shelter in place
Civil warning
Nuclear
Radiological
Hazardous materials
Flood/Flash Flood
Hurricane

All other warnings will use default colors.  Red flag warnings are still being filtered out, just to keep the crawl from being half an hour long between repeats.

Also, in the event of an earthquake of magnitude greater than 6.0, the earthquake notice will appear in the crawl before the weather alerts.  Smaller earthquakes of 2.5 or higher will appear after the weather warnings.

Any questions or problems, just let me know.  Enjoy!