NOAA Weather Script

I created this swanky little script for all you kiddies that pulls the latest weather information from the NOAA website and put them into Indigo variables. Yummy!

NOAA Weather Script

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

Cheers.
Karl

[matt (support)]

Thanks Karl! I'm looking forward to playing with it.

Regards,
Matt

excellent script karl, thanks!

This works very well...but I'm wondering what part of this information would be a variable test for rain to tell Indigo not to water the lawn. Now, don't laugh, but the best I can come up with is: water the lawn unless Humidity is > 100.

Since the humidity is 'relative humidity', then 100% would be raining. So I would say that if the relative humidity is say >98% or so, it's a good bet that it's raining outside.

However, it really depends on how close you are to the reporting station and the geographic differences in your area. Here in AZ, it can be outright pouring rain only a few block away, and you get not a drop. Also, we have a contidion in the summer called 'verga' where it rains, but the water evaporates before it hits the ground. So you can see the rain a few hundred feet above your head, but it doesn't hit you.

BTW, we are on day number 107 without a single drop of rain, an all time record. And it's nearly 80 degrees outside.

yes, i did a little research for mine, and set the humidity threshold at 87% for raining. that is based on what the measured humidity was in my area when it was actually raining. varies w/ location. and with temp. the real thing is to work up an index that takes dew point and temp trends into account as well as rh. still working on that... : )

This is way kool. It worked perfectly on the first try.
Is it possible to "speak" the information that will be stored in the variables list?

Great Script! On cloudy days, I'd like to have my lights turn on a little earlier and turn off a litlle later. I tried to modify the script to get the weather variable with little success. I thought about using visibility but not sure if I can do it that way.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Arturo

Arturo,
Shouldn't be a problem. Just remember that all variables are stored as strings and you will need to convert them to numbers (integers) before you can do any comparison or math.

Just wondering. Could I get the weather variable (cloudy, foggy, etc) as well? I don't see it in the list. Then I could use this as a condition to turn my lights on early or turn them off later. I am a novice at apple script. Any hints are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Arturo

You can only get what NOAA supplies. And all the fields can be turned on/off in the top portion of the script.

So, there is no "cloudy" or "fair" field, only a condition. And to be honest, I don't know all the possibilities that could be expressed in the condition. Here in AZ, we only get to see one condition: sunny

We get sunny, too. But it can go from sunny to rainy to sunny again in 20 minutes. I actually think I can get what I want by dividing relative humidity by visibility. I am going to play around with what values correspond to it getting darker at dusk. Any hints about how to convert the noaa text values to numbers?

Arturo

You can only convert the variables (which are all strings) to number via AppleScript.

I tried by doing this but it says it cannot conver that class of variables.

Here is the code.


tell application "Indigo"
set vismi to value of variable "NOAA_Visiblity_mi" as integer
end tell

Arturo

I'm trying to run the NOAA script. I edited the user defined varialbles and created a timed event in Indigo. I get the follwoing error when running the script.


Mar 29, 2006 10:13 PM
Time/Date Action Weather Script Update
NOAA Weather NOAA Weather Script Starting.
NOAA Weather ParseXML:NSCannotCreateScriptCommandError(10)

I must be doing something wrong.

I'm running OS X Server 10.3.9 and the script runs fine on my laptop running OS X 10.4.5. Both are on the same network. HUH....