eBrandon weather page updates
7/30/2015 at 4:03 PM
As part of a handful of site updates this summer, I’m excited to announce a series of additions to the eBrandon Weather page.
The first is the inclusion of regularly updated info from a personal weather station located in the South end of the City. This includes data updated every ten minutes relating to:
- temperature
- humidity
- rainfall
Rainfall data is to me the most useful of that info since without a rain gauge in one’s backyard they would typically have to wait until the next day to learn how much has fallen. With this update one can now go to the Weather page and learn how much rain has been recorded over the last hour and how much has fallen so far today. This info should be seen as unofficial since it isn’t coming from Environment Canada, but in testing it seems to be pretty darn accurate so far when compared to a traditional rain gauge.
Where the info can be handy is when discussions take place about significant storms or rain events. There’s often a need to know how much rain came with the weather system. An approximate idea is now available on the Weather page to anyone that’s curious. We’ve also seen this summer that rain systems can effect some areas of the city more than others and this should give a good idea of what the South end of the city has seen. The hope is to add at least one other location in the city in order to give a comparison point. Note that the gauge is not able to record snowfall and so will not be active during the winter months. Any info from the weather station should be for informational purposes and still shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for what Environment Canada puts out. Temperature and humidity data in particular are something that seem to have a little variance but are interesting nonetheless.
The next long overdue addition is the inclusion of watches and warnings that have been currently put in place by Environment Canada. There are no watches or warnings as of the time of this posting but if a watch or warning is in put out for Brandon-Carberry-Treherne it will now be prominently displayed at the top of the weather page along with a link to a page with further details.
Also updated is the radar image that’s shown on the page… something that I know a lot of folks check out to see what weather systems might be in our area. Previously the image shown was a small thumbnail image of Minot-based radar. That image has been updated to a larger thumbnail of Environment Canada’s radar that applies to the Brandon area, based in Foxwarren. Although I still personally prefer the detail in Minot radar, it has been down frequently this summer and so isn’t something to rely on at this point. Might flip back at a later date. Either way, links are still included to both Foxwarren and Minot radars so that folks can easily access either.
Another update is the addition to the bottom of the right-hand column of a list of recent Manitoba storm-related Twitter tweets. While info bits in tweets are short, there can still be some good info related to weather happenings and I feel their inclusion is important alongside everything else on the weather page in order to allow folks to see as much of the full picture as possible. Postings won't always be local (right now the most recent are related to Winnipeg) but when there is something local taking place there's a decent chance that there will be a handful of interesting postings showing in this box. Their addition will also go hand-in-hand with last week’s eBrandon discussion forum addition that allows content from sites such as Twitter to be embedded in discussion posts.
The final update isn’t to the weather page so much as to discussions started in the Weather discussion group. When a significant weather event such as the recent Tornado takes place a lot of folks come to eBrandon to learn more and discuss (that particular discussion had over 13,000 views). All weather discussions now have basic weather information shown directly in the right-hand column including recent radar image, links to full radar and other pertinent weather links. The thought is that when things are happening as quickly as they did on Monday this will allow folks reading the discussion thread the quickest possible access to pertinent info.
As always I appreciate your suggestions for the site. If you ever have an idea please drop me a note through the Contact & Support link at the bottom of the page and it might just make it into a future update.
Enjoy!
Edited by Adam, 2015-07-30 16:09:05