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Weather | View information about Weather within our Technology Website Reviews section by reviewing this area of our website. We provide a wealth of information online to help our visitors become better informed about Computer Buzz. |
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Weather
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Weather reporting is one thing the Internet does extremely well. There are any number of excellent sites that you can search for local conditions and forecasts. And that, of course, includes hazardous weather advisories as well. The kicker, rather obviously, involves the accuracy of the forecasts at their source, and there have been precious few breakthroughs in that regard in the last half century, Internet or no Internet. Meteorology is one of the least exact of all the natural sciences, and very few weather forecasts come with a money-back guarantee.
Computer Buzz has assembled a list of some of the most prominent weather web sites for your consideration. We suggest that you look them over and then bookmark one or two of them. We also suggest that you take their forecasts for what they are worth and then pack an umbrella anyway.
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The Weather Channel | website review
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The Weather Channel is the premier TV outlet for weather news, and the Weather Channel web site is also the first place we go for weather info on the Internet.
You can, of course, set it up so that it defaults to the weather story at your particular location. And you can get your forecast for today (hour-by-hour if you like), tonight, tomorrow, the coming weekend, the next ten days, or the entire coming month.
The WC's radar images are superimposed on Microsoft's Virtual Earth aerial photos, so the quality is first rate.
Official Website: www.Weather.com
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NOAA | website review
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NOAA is the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they run the National Weather Service. They have most of the military and civilian radars and satellites at their disposal and some of the biggest super-computers in North America, so they're not hurting for manpower or resources.
NOAA's web site is about as authoritative as it gets when it comes to weather. If NOAA says there's a 90 percent chance of rain in your town, you can pretty well bet that the frogs will be heading for higher ground. The other major weather outfits in North America get most of their raw data, if not their actual forecasts, from NOAA.
Official Website: www.nws.noaa.com
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Yahoo! Weather | website review
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The Yahoo Weather web site gets its forecasts directly from the Weather Channel, so you might as well cut out this middleman and go directly to the Weather Channel source. This site is well done, but any way you slice it, it's still a Weather Channel knockoff.
Yahoo tries to make this Weather Channel clone more relevant by including weather "news" from around the globe. You can access news stories about floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and any other kind of weather related natural disasters that pique your interest.
Official Website: weather.Yahoo.com
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Weather Underground | website review
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The Weather Underground (TWU) is a web site hosted by the University of Michigan. But just because it's run by college kids doesn't mean that it's not ready for prime time. TWU has a collection of regional North American radar maps that is as good as anything we've seen.
Much of their raw data comes from volunteer weather fanatics who report observations from weather stations in their back yards around the US and Canada. In fact, TWU will sell you just such a weather station, and you can be one of their weather-reporting volunteers. We suspect that a lot of their data (and perhaps forecasts) also come from NOAA.
Official Website: www.wunderground.com
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MSNBC Weather | website review
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MSNBC's weather site is another knockoff of the Weather Channel, using WC's maps and radar images (and, probably, forecasts too). This site focuses more on weather news (floods, hurricanes, etc.) than it does on hard, detailed forecasts.
We suspect that MSNBC maintains this site mostly because they feel some kind of an obligation not to let the subject of weather (as in: "news, weather, and sports") slip through the cracks in cyberspace. Natural disasters are sensationalized, and we have the sneaking suspicion that the real purpose of this web site is light entertainment rather than weather. Computer Buzz sees no reason prefer this web site over any of the others.
Official Website: www.msnbc.msn.com
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AccuWeather | website review
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AccuWeather presents accurate, localized, branded forecasts and severe weather bulletins to over 106 million Americans each day via the Internet, mobile devices and IPTV, through the airwaves, and in print.
The 113 meteorologists at AccuWeather deliver a portfolio of customized products and services to media, business, government, and institutions, and inform millions of visitors worldwide through the free AccuWeather.com website.
AccuWeather also provides content onto more than 20,000 third-party Internet sites, including CNN Interactive, ABC's owned and operated stations, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Official Website: www.Accuweather.com
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CNN.com Weather | website review
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CNN's weather site is somewhat like Yahoo's in a way it's an afterthought by an outfit whose primary purpose is news and entertainment. That's not to say that their forecasts are not just as inaccurate as anyone's, but it's not a web site for real weather junkies.
Their home page is cluttered with clickable news headlines that have nothing to do with meteorology, and many of their North American weather maps are downright hokey.
Official Website: Weather.CNN.com
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Intellicast.com | website review
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Intellicast is a business unit within WSI, Weather Services International. Intellicast was started in 1996. WSI has the world's largest commercial meteorological database, incorporating U.S. National Weather Service, U.S. military, Canadian, British, and Japanese governments, other international agencies, and commercial vendors. WSI has extensive data collection facilities for NEXRAD, satellite, lightning, and other meteorological data.
Intellicast is actually a pretty good source for weather info of all kinds IF you can fight your way through all of their on-screen commercials and advertising. If any weather web site in the world is guilty of ad overkill, this is the one.
Official Website: www.Intellicast.com
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