Accuweather sucks!

I have to laugh.  You're right Accuweather blows!  They never get it right.  It's like they're give you the weather from another city or something. 

I second the recommendation to get the weather from another source, if there is one.

Yeah, that's what I meant

About Accuweather feeds.

We parse every 6 hours as anything of more frequency was a huge CPU drain.  So the current weather and forecast can be fro 0-6 hours behind.  We can first try every 3 hours to 'tighten' up the 'today' and possibly the forecasts and see how the server handles it.

I did compare my zipcode with Accuweather vs Weather.com vs Weatherunderground.  There are differences b/w all three but by and large for my zipcode it's on track from info directly from there site.

Why Accuweather?

Weatherunderground was the first choice, but they don't provide the feeds and their customer service is terrible even if I ever really figured out that they did.

Weather.com is a free service but was in transition as far as feeds when I first checked, wasn't sure on reliability of the service (not the weather).  Plus they had no international feeds.

Accuweather has all the feeds, had the setup ready-to-go for the server.

SOOOOO, I will try to up the frequency of weather refreshes on the site to improve things as a first option. 

Anybody else?  I will keep you posted.

I even will log onto BT to go to my training log to get my weather forecast - so as you can see, I think it's good data and a very cool feature.

I'm fairly happy with weather.com but I just thought it would be nice to have the forecast included with our training logs be a little more accurate if possible.  Besides, my work computer probably won't allow me to install any apps...administrative rights.

This is over my head bur is this they type of service that Ron needs to generate the forecast data in the training logs?

http://www.weather.gov/xml/

Ok.  We changed the feed refresh rate and made sure the server could handle it.  Before it was every 8 hours.  Now the 'Today' is every hour and the 'Forecast' is every 4 hours.  That's the best we can do .

Everything seems to jive a lot better comparing to accuweather directly...

We checked out the other feeds some more, and as of the moment, they either just serve the US or are 'experimental'...I can't trust them yet and the won't serve BT well...if they improve and are global, we will revisit them.  It would also take a lot of time/money to reprogram new feeds if we ever decide to switch....

Not much more I can do as far as predicting the weather better.

I hope this helps.

It was good to bring it up.  It was something that definitely needed more optimization and if it wasnt for your post, it would have been a missed opportunity.  Cuz if nobody says anything, I will never know to try and improve something

Not to keep beating on the subject but this is a good example of the issue.  For tomorrow (Fri) my training log says "rain" with a high of 51, suggesting a wash-out day.

TODAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY	MONDAY
Intermittent Clouds Temp: 61 F Hum: 43% P: 30.26 in Wind: 3mph NE	Rain (AM and PM) High 51F Low 42F	Partly Sunny High 60F Low 42F	Mostly Sunny High 69F Low 50F	Mostly Sunny High 72F Low 53F

While Weather.com says mostly cloudy with a 20% chance of precip. and high of 57, which to me means it will likely be a decent day to train, aside from a small chance of a shower.  6 degrees also seems like a rather large difference.  If I were a betting man I'd put my money on the Weather.com forecast to be much more accurate...based on past experience.

Well, my point is that the "1 inch square weather overview" provided by weather.com tends to be fairly accurate while the Accuweather version leaves something to be desired.  I know Ron has done what he can to address the issue at this point but I just felt like bitching a little more

I chose not to list the forecast details for the sake of log space.  If you go to accuweather for friday for norfolk, va, the day it has the raindrop icon, and click on the details, it will give you whats in the attached pic...so yes, like weather.com is says chance of showers or isolated showers...

Perhaps I can have a hover box that appears over the icons for additional information to preface the icon?  THAT may be a cool idea to help...OR somehow fit the forecast description in?  Or have an option to not display the weather at all.  Weather.com is not at the point yet, or any other service, to provide global weather for BT.

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