Setting Up a Dashboard w/ Multiple Local Weather Stations

[tessellated]

Wind forecasts in Julesburg, CO are horrible. I use forecasted gust speed as my go/no go indicator for biking (wind speed alone is irrelevant because gusts are routinely ~twice as high). The problem is, the forecast is so inaccurate (esp. at this time of year) that I've hit wind significantly higher than forecasted on almost all of my recent rides. It's very location sensitive. It can be perfectly calm at my apartment but just a mile or two away it's so windy/gusty that I either have a miserable ride or I just turn around and go home. Insanely annoying is an understatement. 

There's a ton of agriculture around here and I know there are lots of personal weather stations in addition to the stations on the interstate, Union Pacific Railroad line, and at the tiny airfields that dot this area. I want to connect to those so that I can see real time gust conditions. That way before I leave on a ride with a good forecast I can look at current conditions in the direction I'm planning to ride, and just stay home if it turns out the forecast is another lie.

Since wind forecasts often change up until the last minute, checking the weather (currently using the dark sky weather app's hourly tab) for potential biking opportunities is a daily task. I wanna make it quick and convenient, which brings me to my question. 

How can I (1) make sure I've found all the accessible local weather stations, I think I've got 8 so far, and (2) setup a sort of "dashboard" that will show me current gust speeds from all of them?

I rarely go more than 30 miles out of town so most readings wouldn't vary and could be omitted.

Thanks for your suggestions. 

[tessellated]

So far I have 16 stations at 13 locations. 

CO034

OVD01

UP469

CRK01

KCOJULES9

KCOJULES7

KCOSEDGW1

KNECHAPP3

KCOJULES3

KCOHOLYO28, KCOHOLYO7, KHEQ

KNEBIGSP9, UR489

KNECHAPP5

KNEBIGSP16

[iFred]

@tessellated look into Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana if you're looking for a fun technical weekend project. You'll be able to collect from those stations and then dump into the influx.

Pirate Weather has been pretty damn great for being a drop in API replacement.

[tessellated]

On 4/23/2023 at 4:26 PM, iFred said:

@tessellated look into Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana if you're looking for a fun technical weekend project. You'll be able to collect from those stations and then dump into the influx.

Pirate Weather has been pretty D**n great for being a drop in API replacement.

Unfortunately I haven't done any programming in more than a decade and this would be substantially beyond my current skill level.

I'm surprised there's no app in the play store for viewing live data from weather stations. Even the apps with "weather station" in the name are just displaying the same incorrect forecast data. 

[tessellated]

I found a couple more stations on ambientweather.net. Unfortunately that site and pwsweather.com won't show gust data easily. I have to click on each station and scroll around to find the info. 

So those stations are out unless I can find an easy way to quickly view the data. Prepping for a ride takes me too long already. 

Even on windy.com I'm having a hard time knowing if the information shown is from actual measurements or the same useless forecast.

[Doinko]

8 hours ago, tessellated said:

I found a couple more stations on ambientweather.net. Unfortunately that site and pwsweather.com won't show gust data easily. I have to click on each station and scroll around to find the info. 

So those stations are out unless I can find an easy way to quickly view the data. Prepping for a ride takes me too long already. 

Even on windy.com I'm having a hard time knowing if the information shown is from actual measurements or the same useless forecast.

Would this site work? Gusts show up as red numbers underneath the temperature https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?obs=true&wfo=bou 

[tessellated]

12 hours ago, Doinko said:

Would this site work? Gusts show up as red numbers underneath the temperature https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?obs=true&wfo=bou 

It's a great site but doesn't have enough stations around here. The first 4 on my list are from that site, though the 4th one is a bit far out to be relevant. KHEQ and UR489 also appear on that map, though KHEQ is roughly at my furthest turn around point, and I just realized UR489 doesn't include wind gust data. 

Wundermap is the worst. Stations appear and disappear when I zoom in and out. That's kind of normal for maps, but in this case I'm seeing stations disappear when I zoom in on them. That makes it hard to know if I've got them all, and to use the site in general. Most or all of the stations on my list that begin with KCO or KNE came from wundermap.

Wundermap does have a lot of stations so for now it seems my best (only) option is to use both sites and click/hover on each station to see the gust measurements.

FYI I went on a ride yesterday. Dark sky weather app showed a peak gust speed of 11mph for the whole day. I checked readings from weather stations along my planned route. They all showed pretty low wind (8mph and under) except for one that was 15mph.

I decided to go. The wind felt higher than 10mph right out the door and I could tell I had a tailwind for most of the ride out. That was mid day. Riding home in the early afternoon I faced an unpleasant headwind. Not truly miserable but enough to take the fun out of that part of the ride. I'm horrible at guessing wind speeds but maybe ~15mph.

Maybe that's just how things are around here and there's nothing I can do but move. So far in 2023 I think I've only had one ride with an accurate forecast.

Although if last year is any indicator, in a month or two we'll begin seeing full weeks of complete stillness.