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Paul

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Blog Entries posted by Paul

  1. Paul
    Long range forecasts are always a hot topic, and with good reason - the ability to predict weather patterns a long way in advance is extremely useful!

    From a commercial perspective it can be hugely important, a retailer with a reasonable understanding of the upcoming weather can plan stock purchasing, promotion and staffing levels more effectively, energy companies can plan for demand, event organisers can put contingencies in place and plan around likely conditions, and so on.

    From the public perspective, weather is a popular conversation topic and an important part of our daily lives, so, for instance knowing if it's going to be a hot summer or cold winter can help us plan how we're going to live, plus of course it give us a decent subject for discussion both offline and online.

    The problem is though, that some 'weather companies/forecasters' know that long range forecasts are important to people and a popular topic of conversation, so they use them to get publicity for themselves. For instance forecasts telling of severe storms and snow in winter will get coverage for their business or website, so often they may get issued with that in mind. In my opinion, these sorts of forecasts give long range forecasting a bad name, and responsible forecasters a difficult time as people become wary of trusting forecasts having been burnt by one or more spurious forecasts.

    If you're one of those people who has been burnt believing some of the crazier predictions in recent years, just bear in mind that outrageous predictions of specific events months in advance, or of the coldest winter since records began are likely not to have been designed as a source of information, they're more likely to have been written with creating publicity in mind. So take them with a huge pinch of salt and instead listen to likes of the Met-Office or Netweather and other forecasters who use respected modelling data and/or up front lrf techniques who always present what that data shows whether or not it's hugely newsworthy.

    For me, long range forecasting is still an unproven science with no-one nailing the perfect way to do it yet (and maybe no-one ever will), but the way forward is certainly not to use them as publicity stunts, it's to present things as you see them in a realistic way, whether that means getting on the front page of the papers or not...
  2. Paul
    I've got a date for you to add to your diaries this morning - Wednesday 29th October...

    Next Wednesday will see the first full Netweather winter forecast of the year online, the winter area will be back on the site, the skiing/boarding forecasts will be back on the site and the first update of the Christmas 08 forecast will be online. It's going to be a busy day!
  3. Paul

    Free Weather For Your Website

    By Paul,

    As many of you will be aware, Netweather's 4web service enables anyone with a website to display a local forecast on it, just be copying and pasting a few lines of code.

    Today, we've added some brand new templates to the system, giving you a greater range of designs and sizes to choose from. Three of the new designs are shown below:

    [attachment=68889:1.png][attachment=68890:2.png][attachment=68891:3.png]

    We're also going to continue to add further new designs over the coming weeks, with at least 2 more being added every week for the next month or so. If you would like to add your local forecast to your website, please visit the 4web page by [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=4web;sess="]clicking here[/url] , it's extremely quick and easy to generate the code, and is then simply a case of copying and pasting it onto your pages.
  4. Paul
    We'd like to know how you viewed this summer, and as a simple and measureable way of summing it up, we thought we'd make a quick poll! Please place your vote!

    It appears that we can't allow guests to vote in polls on this system at the moment - sorry about that! But if any guests would like to cast their vote, please just make a comment with the word you would like to vote for and we'll add it to the results
  5. Paul

    Popups - Aaaarrggghhhhh

    By Paul,

    Hi all, just a quick apology for you - it appears that over the last few days one of the ad companies we deal with (or should I say used to deal with) have, without our knowledge been putting a sneaky popup onto the site when one of their banners shows. The popup was nothing malicious or anything, but as we have a no popup policy on netweather (and always will have), it's obviously not on!!

    As soon as we found out about this last night we pulled all of their ads, and following on from discussions this morning we've made the decision not to use them again because of this.

    So sorry if you got one of these popups, we hate them as much as you and it won't happen again!

    Paul
  6. Paul
    Following the successful launch of the [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=189&showentry=3483"]community groups[/url] with a number of new groups already up and running, a lot of people have been asking how best to let the other members know about their new groups, so I thought I'd share some ideas.

    Firstly, we've made a change to the profile system, so if you visit [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] then select edit profile information, you will see an option at the bottom to enter your community group into it. This will then show up on your profile and also alongside all of your posts.

    Another great way of communicating with other users on the forum is to place a link into your signature to the group(s) you belong to, perhaps with a little bit of information to let people know what the group is all about. We will also be creating some button style images for group users to make use of in their signatures, and of course there is nothing to stop any group members from creating their own group logos etc either.

    You also have the blogging facility available to use, it is now setup so that multiple editors can add entries to one blog, so a community group blog can be setup. You can do this by visiting [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] and following the blog setup instructions.

    We will also do our best to help you promote your community group, whenever a new group is started we'll announce it on the forum, and we will also be regularly featuring groups within the site and forum newsletters which are sent out.

    Hopefully that will be enough for you to get your teeth into, of course it doesn't just have to be forum members you can promote your groups to, if you have friends with similar interests, or if you use facebook or other social networks, why not let them know about your community group too?

    Don't forget - if you would like to set a group up, please drop any one of the team a pm.

    Paul
  7. Paul
    As you may have seen in [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?showtopic=49142"]this announcement[/url], there have been some changes made to the netweather forum, including the addition of new community forums and groups. We're pretty excited about the possibilities and opportunities that this brings for the community, and already a few groups have been started, which you can take a look at [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?showforum=118"]here[/url]

    All groups are free and open for anyone with an interest in the subject to join and take part in, so you can get together with other like minded members of the community to discuss topics, create projects, arrange events or just socialise. The aim isn't to dilute the ongoing areas of the forum, so if for instance someone wanted to start a model watchers group, members of that group would still be encouraged to post into the main model discussion thread on the forums, then within the group they could perhaps discuss other aspects of the models, learn more about how they work, talk about interpreting the output and so on.

    The idea is that when a group is started, the group leader(s) will look after that group, will be able to setup topics, moderate as required (with the team's support) and look to bring people into their group and take the group forward in the direction they want - it's a real opportunity to make a part of netweather their own.

    On top of this, the blogging system has been changed to allow multiple editors of a blog, so a group could set up their own blog with several editors and use that as an extension to the forum areas. The blogs will also soon become much more customisable with a variety of skin and header options and even the option to design your own look and feel to them. (More on all of this will be posted in a 'how to' thread on the forum shortly).

    If you would like to start a group for social purposes, research, to organise an event, to get some like minded individuals together to discuss a particular subject or whatever else, please feel free to [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=contact;sess="]contact us[/url] and we'll get it set up for you.

    Paul
  8. Paul

    The Homepage

    By Paul,

    It's been planned for a little while and today at last I started putting together the new look homepage for Netweather. We have a number of new and revamped items planned for the homepage, including a new alerts system, and a number of other things we'll talk more about in due course.

    Question is though, what would you like to see on there and what items do you like and dislike about the current homepage? Please let me know - your ideas will certainly be taken on board.

    Look forward to hearing your thoughts...!
  9. Paul
    It's taken time, effort and server upgrades to get this running, but finally we have a new Hi-Res forecast model for the UK here on Netweather.

    The model is called the NMM, it is used operationally by the NCEP in the USA and is known as a mesoscale model - which means it is high enough resolution to pick out small more localised weather features that lower resolution models will miss.

    At the current time the Netweather NMM model is running at a resolution of 12km (0.09 degrees), which if you compare that to the GFS is significantly more detailed, with the GFS running at a resolution of ~60km (0.5 degrees). The new model runs out to 4 hours and is updated twice a day, with hourly timeslots available throughout.

    The new system is still in its beta phase and is available to subscribers to the full [url="https://www.netweather.tv/secure/cgi-bin/login.pl"]Netweather Extra[/url] package.

    Here are a few screenshots from the model:

    [attachment=66311:nmmex1.png]

    [attachment=66312:nmmex2.png]

    [attachment=66313:nmmex3.png]

    More information on Netweather extra can be found [url="https://www.netweather.tv/secure/cgi-bin/login.pl"]here[/url].
  10. Paul

    Busy Busy Busy

    By Paul,

    The Netweather community has been a pretty lively and busy place over the last few days as snow has been rattling across the country.

    Over the space of 48 hours during the Sunday and Monday (1st and 2nd Feb), over 13,400 posts were made which if you average it out right across the period means there were nearly 5 posts a minute, every single minute! Those who were online during Sunday morning will have seen we took steps to make sure the servers didn't slow down or crash by upgrading them, we were glad we did as that evening we set a new record for the amount of users online with 1233 people all the forum at once, which hammered the previous record of around 670 which was set just a couple of weeks beforehand.

    Over the last few days we have also welcomed more than 140 new members, so welcome to you all - it's great to have you onboard!

    I need to say a big thank you to our team members who have done a sterling job in keeping things well organised and flowing along nicely during this extremely busy time, thanks too to all the members who have contributed to the great atmosphere on here!

    Paul
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