Simple ways to receive severe-weather alerts

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SAFETY By Nathan Parker Over this recent Easter weekend, major storms and tornadoes raged across the United States. The southern regions were hit espe
[See the full post at: Simple ways to receive severe-weather alerts]

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deuce120, SueW, woody, Myst, Nathan Parker

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[WSDKS01]

Tracey Capen wrote:

SAFETY By Nathan Parker Over this recent Easter weekend, major storms and tornadoes raged across the United States. The southern regions were hit espe
[See the full post at: Simple ways to receive severe-weather alerts]

For Canadians, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s WeatherCAN app is an easy and simple way to keep aware of current weather, radar and alerts for your area. It’s free (free is always good), gives you localized forecasts as well as alerts. It can also provide information to saved locations. It’s available for iOS and Android in their app stores here. WeatherCAN

ECCC runs an experimental listserv for PC users but you have to have a reason to use it (Media, emergency services, trained and registered CANWARN Severe Weather Spotter)

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by WSDKS01.

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Nathan Parker, woody

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While the article is US-centric, many of the concepts carry over to other countries. If you have specific recommendations for a different country, post it here! (And thanks to WSDKS01 for filling us in on Canada.)

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Kirsty, Nathan Parker

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@Nathan Parker, many thanks for such a comprehensive article!  I listen to my NOAA Weather Radio every morning at breakfast (religiously), and sometimes wonder why some of the meteorologists on TV do not 🙂  I appreciate your links to replacements too, just in case — as mine was a gift in 1984!

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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Nathan Parker

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In the UK, the UK MetOffice has a good free app as well. I even sent data from my US weather station to the UK MetOffice in the past since they collected data from US stations (my weather station is company-owned now, so I don’t have that flexibility). The UK MetOffice app felt pretty solid for UK users.

Great to know on Canada’s app. Nice to know!

I believe the WeatherBug app is global. I know the Earth Networks apps for organizations are global (Earth Networks operates a global weather and lightning network).

By the way, one quick typo the editors introduced. In terms of radar data, it is Level III, not Level II, that has access to the handful of datasets such as rain totals. Level II has some radar datasets not in Level III and vice versa. It gets confusing and complicated fast, but if anyone ever wants the full breakdown, I can provide it. I finally learned it all after working years for a weather information provider. 🙂

Nathan Parker

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Thank you for the great article. I have had the RadarScope Pro Tier 1 App for over two years now, and I wouldn’t want to be without it.  When we had those EF4 Easter tornadoes, I could very distinctly see the tornado debris ball with the mode set to Super- Res Velocity Tilt 1 on both tornadoes.  That is a sight I hope I don’t ever see again.

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Nathan Parker

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Indeed! While I enjoy my storm tracking tools, I don’t enjoy seeing some of the sights I’ve seen on radar, because I know with those sights come damage.

Nathan Parker

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For the United States, I go to the National Weather Service at https://www.weather.gov/. Then in the upper left corner enter a zip code and get a local weather forecast.  Then save the URL for your local forecast to your desktop and presto change-o you have the current forecast for your area by simply opening the link.

You can also get Weather Radar for your area by going to the Weather Underground at https://www.wunderground.com/radar/us   and enter your region.

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Nathan Parker

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The NWS does have good forecasts, and I still check the official NWS forecasts against the model-generated forecasts we use since it’s always good to check model-generated forecasts against real humans.

I’ve used WUnderground in the past, but I’ve found Baron’s radar in the Baron Critical Weather app to be superior. Baron has all sorts of patented exclusive radar layers and were the ones who did the dual-pol hardware upgrades with the NWS. I’ve found them to have the most solid weather radar data I’ve used when the intense stuff happens.

Nathan Parker

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Are there any sources of this kind of detailed data that don’t involve downloading someone’s “app?”  Wundermap and the like are just composite reflectivity images, but I’d like to see the slices at the various elevations, storm-related velocity, and dual-pole.  I had apps that did this sort of thing on Android when I was using my tablet more often than I do now… but it’s eight years old, and very little will actually run on it anymore, and I’ve grown in my distrust and contempt for Google in the years since I bought that, so I won’t be getting a replacement.  I’d have to get an iPad if I was going to go tablet, and I know it would drive me nuts being locked out of the innards (my tablet is rooted, and I’ve modified it to suit myself just as I do with “real” operating systems like Windows or KDE Neon.

I noticed that the RadarScope one that was mentioned above has “apps” for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows… but I don’t use any of those.  There’s a good chance I could get a Windows program to work via WINE, but there’s no direct download link… just a link to the Microsoft Store, which I would not use even if I was using Windows 10, as I have written about before.

The basic radar data viewer on the Baron site is pretty good, but it’s the same kind of data that I can see on WU.  It’s meant more as a demo for their services than an actual weather site in itself.  They’re selling the backend; I just need a frontend that works for more than the composite radar.

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The two “apps” that are going to give you what you need would be RadarScope or GRLevel3. Both of those offer access to all of those datasets you need.

WUnderground still seems to have their legacy radar maps around which looks like it does most of what you’d need: https://www.wunderground.com/radar/us/ar/north-little%20rock/lzk

I don’t see dual-pol in it though.

The NWS own viewer has basic access as well, although it’s missing a bunch of datasets:

https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar.php?rid=lzk&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no

There is a web-based tool called SimuAWIPS which would seem to offer all you’d need at a decent monthly rate:

https://simuawips.com/

I haven’t tried it yet. Thought about taking a trial.

For web-based, SimuAWIPS seems to be the most powerful for the price for what you’re looking for. If you can resort to an app, I’d recommend a system that can run either RadarScope or GRLevel3. I know either of those would work for your needs, and they’re going to be the most solid apps that would fit your needs. If you’re able to pair them with an AllisonHouse Chaser package, you’ll also have rock-solid radar feeds no matter what happens during severe weather (even if the NWS public feeds suffer an overload).

Nathan Parker

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Ascaris

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Nathan,

Thanks, I had forgotten about the WU legacy viewer.  It’s got a really small view port that doesn’t seem to have a way to use up all the available space in the browser window, but it’s still usable.  The dual-pol (pol meaning polarization, and polarization implies poles, so I had thought that “dual pole” was the preferred term, but I guess I was wrong about that) is just an extra, “nice to have” kind of thing.

The NWS site, last I checked, still requires the Flash plugin to animate their images on the so-called “enhanced” version.  It’s a lot less useful with only static images!  Like nearly everyone else, I’ve closed the book on Flash.  None of the currently-supported major browsers support it anymore, and they haven’t for a while.

The standard version (that works without Flash) lacks the base reflectivity, having only composite reflectivity and storm-relative velocity.  Given the breadth of information available from the NWS site, it’s kind of annoying that their radar viewer is so basic.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
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Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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