Add Date to Emergency Broadcast Weather Information.

[CaptKaspar]

I wish the date was added to the automated weather broadcast information. 

 

Provide the date (and ideally time) that the weather information is being provided for instead of just saying "Today" and "Tomorrow". It would eliminate any confusion on what day the information is referring to. I have listened to the broadcast at midnight and it gave me the same information from earlier in the previous day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[knightshousegames]

Well, I was curious about this, so I pulled up a live feed of a NOAA Weather Radio Broadcast, and while they do report the time of the most recent reading, surprisingly for the forecasts they don't use dates, only weekdays

 

It definitely would make sense for them to change it so it would report the current hour, like say "As of 6:00am EST, the temperature at Louisville Airport was reported as 64 degrees" or something before going into the forecast.

[CaptKaspar]

8 hours ago, knightshousegames said:

Well, I was curious about this, so I pulled up a live feed of a NOAA Weather Radio Broadcast, and while they do report the time of the most recent reading, surprisingly for the forecasts they don't use dates, only weekdays

 

It definitely would make sense for them to change it so it would report the current hour, like say "As of 6:00am EST, the temperature at Louisville Airport was reported as 64 degrees" or something before going into the forecast.

 

Yeah our ASOS (Automated Surface Observation Stations) and AWOS (Automated Weather Observation Stations) in the US both report the "zulu" (GMT) time of the their observation. 

 

My profession is in aviation and we regularly use automated weather services. Most - not all - of the weather reporting stations in the US are also located at airports. I noticed the lack of time in the PZ weather forecasts. In aviation we have automated ASOS and AWOS that provide information for METARs (Meteorlogical Terminal Air Report)s that are typically issued automatically at the top of each hour. This METAR information is compiled into an ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) that is broadcast hourly (or more frequently). It includes the date and time as well as a "designator" using the phonetic alphabit. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, etc. This way you sequentially know which ATIS is coming next and you know when it is an updated one or if you have an older one. These are all for observations and not forecasts. 

 

When human interaction isn't used the ASOS or AWOS will continuously broadcast over the assigned frequency (you can also call the station's phone number and listen to the broadcast that way).

 

We don't actually have any forecasts that are broadcast via radio in aviation. We are required to make our flight planning based on official weather forecasts such as Area Forecasts (FAs) and TAFs (Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts) that I affectionately call "Totally Asinine Forecasts" cause they're wrong more than they're right...but I degress. But these are not broadcast via radio. They do provide a date and valid time for the use of the forecast though. 

 

I like having a simple forecast for today and one for tomorrow in PZ. We don't need to know much other than the winds, visibility, sky cover, temperature, and expected precipitation for PZ. Rising or falling pressure would be useful, but not a big deal. I just wish they added the date/time. An automated system would not say "today" and "tomorrow". It would give a timestamp in a terrible text-to-speech voice. 

Edited November 7, 2022 by CaptKaspar

[knightshousegames]

3 hours ago, CaptKaspar said:

 

Yeah our ASOS (Automated Surface Observation Stations) and AWOS (Automated Weather Observation Stations) in the US both report the "zulu" (GMT) time of the their observation. 

 

My profession is in aviation and we regularly use automated weather services. Most - not all - of the weather reporting stations in the US are also located at airports. I noticed the lack of time in the PZ weather forecasts. In aviation we have automated ASOS and AWOS that provide information for METARs (Meteorlogical Terminal Air Report)s that are typically issued automatically at the top of each hour. This METAR information is compiled into an ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) that is broadcast hourly (or more frequently). It includes the date and time as well as a "designator" using the phonetic alphabit. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, etc. This way you sequentially know which ATIS is coming next and you know when it is an updated one or if you have an older one. These are all for observations and not forecasts. 

 

When human interaction isn't used the ASOS or AWOS will continuously broadcast over the assigned frequency (you can also call the station's phone number and listen to the broadcast that way).

 

We don't actually have any forecasts that are broadcast via radio in aviation. We are required to make our flight planning based on official weather forecasts such as Area Forecasts (FAs) and TAFs (Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts) that I affectionately call "Totally Asinine Forecasts" cause they're wrong more than they're right...but I degress. But these are not broadcast via radio. They do provide a date and valid time for the use of the forecast though. 

 

I like having a simple forecast for today and one for tomorrow in PZ. We don't need to know much other than the winds, visibility, sky cover, temperature, and expected precipitation for PZ. Rising or falling pressure would be useful, but not a big deal. I just wish they added the date/time. An automated system would not say "today" and "tomorrow". It would give a timestamp in a terrible text-to-speech voice. 

 

Wow, thats really interesting.

 

I think the idea is it's supposed to be like the NOAA Weather Radio, which is an emergency band that has been run since the 1960s, and is especially important in places like Tornado Ally when the power goes out for getting updates on imminent storm warnings and other emergencies. So having regular radios that could tune into it around would make sense, though I think in real life they broadcast on a higher frequency than most consumer radios go to, so you need a special emergency radio to listen.

 

You can listen to some examples of it here https://www.weatherusa.net/radio

 

...though, with how few of them actually seem to be broadcasting, I'm not so sure this system would survive the zombie apocalypse. But to be fair, that might be on the internet side, not the radio side, since this definitely doesn't have every NWS location listed.

 

Yeah, I used Louisville Airport in my example because  the broadcasts I could actually get to tune in all said "The current temperature at [so and so] airport was [so and so] degrees", plus it makes sense from a lore perspective, since Louisville Airport is an actual location in the game.

 

Interestingly, the early 90s was when they actually started the conversion to TTS, before that they were just tape recordings of real people. But yeah, if you listen, they actually do use "today" to refer to the current day, then just use the following weekdays to refer to later days in the forecast, I never heard them use the actual date, just the current time.

[darrylrose]

Believe it or not, I haven't noticed that the weather broadcast doesn't mention dates. I usually assume that they predict the weather for the next day, although it's true that it would be better to provide specific dates. Fortunately, many other forecast platforms are more specific about the dates, eliminating any confusion about the temperature at specific times. Personally, I like using this one https://www.worldweatheronline.com/weather-api/ for weather predictions. I discovered this platform when I wanted to check the weather in Rome, where I was going on vacation. This platform gives information about the weather all over the globe.

Edited January 14, 2023 by darrylrose