As you may or may not know, much of the local weather data and features that have been provided

on this Web Site since 2001 came about through a close working relationship between

the Weather Underground and the developer of the Virtual Weather Station software.

Unfortunately, as we are all too familiar, things change over time.

The Weather Undergorund, aka WU, has implemented a new Weather Application Program Interface or Weather API for short.

The new  API, as it is written, is currently incompatible with the existing version of the Virtual Weather Station (VWS) software.

From all indications that are based on chat room blogs from www.wxforum.net, the developer(s) of the VWS software

are not actively persuing or engaged in upgrading the VWS software to be compatible with the new WU API.

 What this means is data that flowed freely in the past from our Personal Weather Stations to the Weather Underground

and back again no longer flows in that recprical manner to us for posting on our local Web Sites.

Features like the Local Weather Exchange Network, 5 Day Forecast, Weather Warnings, Records and Normals, Normal Rain,

 both Month to Date and Year to Date and a good portion of the Web Links that were included with the VWS softare no longer function.

In addition, the Weather Underground's Rapid Fire Update feature has failed to funciton properly on numerous occassions

making it virtually impossible to display real time weather data being generated by our Personal Weather Stations.

Those inconvenient failures in conjuntion with the Weather Underground's Rapid Fire feature continuing to use an

abandoned Flash software that is not supported by your iPhone or iPad or iPod nor for most SmartPhones

has necessitated finding a more reliable way to provide our weather data.

In short, Flash has been abandoned by many sites in favor of supported technologies such as

HTML5 or by providing their own custom applications.

There is a posting at the bottom of this page . It originally resided at the bottom of the Home Page.

It goes into more detail and provides some links should you choose to be more informed

about the behind the scenes changes that have taken place.

If you did read the posting at the bottom of the Home Page then you probably came across

the comments about "flipping the switch off"

and

 " investigating a permanent work around that will no longer rely on the Weather Underground".

As good as our word, the work around is in hand and continues to evolve during the process

of testing and implementation of the the new features.

No longer will we rely on the Weather Underground and the Virtual Weather Station software to talk to each other

and provide information back to us as in the past.

Going forward we will use a local method for extracting the live weather data direcetly from the VWS software

 and display it in a similiar fashion calling it the Rapid Refresh Update.

The old 5 day forecast will be replaced using the new National Weather Service API to provide a

 7 day forecast with more details than in the past.

All the Web Links on the Home Page that originally pointed to the Weather Underground will now point

to the National Weather Service equivalent for maps, satellite pictures, radar, etc.

Links supporting the Ambient Weather site and Virtual Weather Software will be minimized

 or eliminated all together since it is against our better judgement to advertise a less than

fully functional Virtual Weather Station software package as a working solution

while the owners charge full price for their product.

With all of that said and off our chests, we are now moving on with the overhaul and redesign of our Weather Web sites.

We hope you like the new look and feel of the site and the features we are offering.

Click here to enter the KFLSEBAS1 Weather Web Site

....Regarding missing Information from the Local Weather Exchange, 5 Day forecast, Weather Warnings, Records and Normals, Rainfall Totals and broken links to the Weather Underground….

I have personally penned several emails to Kari at the Weather Underground with limited success at getting results.

It started with the Rapid Fire feature not working and locking up Web Browsers with a long running script.

It progressed to the data that was fed to the Virtual Weather Station Software from the Weather Underground failing to update.

The following are some of the discussions and information on the WXFORUM that provide some insight

as to the why but there does not appear to be any active if or how as to whether the problem will be fixed.

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=c10c6c96634d93213b98ed6f28e7a82d&topic=31309.25

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=c10c6c96634d93213b98ed6f28e7a82d&topic=31309.0

One of the folks in the WXFORUM posted a message from Kari at the Weather Underground:

“It's simply that the software is pulling data from a server that no longer exists and they won't update it to pull data from our API”.

I’m not sure who the “they” is but would venture to guess it is the folks that authored the Virtual Weather Station software.

Of course, the Weather Underground changed their protocol and is no longer compatible with the

Virtual Weather Station software that has worked for close to 20 years.

I’ve been using Virtual Weather Station software to send data to the Weather Underground since 2001.

If you are one of the many VWS users that are affected by this recent change in protocols,

 you can voice your displeasure with the situation to help@wunderground.com or

 the folks at Ambient Weather http://www.ambientweather.com/ telephone number (480) 346-3380.

Something else, the Weather Underground does not seem to have a problem making money off

your Personal Weather station reporting to their network.

You can investigate this further at: https://www.wunderground.com/autobrand/info.asp

I don’t know how the rest of the Amateur Weather folks feel about the whole situation.

However, I for one am about ready to flip the switch off.

In the meantime, rest assured we are currently working to implement a permanent work around

that will no longer rely on the Weather Underground.

...Many features on this Web Page no longer work because the Weather Underground has made changes that directly affected the Virtual Weather Station software. There is no ETR at this time for a fix.