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2 New Version Information for the Weather Utility
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5 :Copyright: (c) 2006-2024 Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org>. Permission
6 to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is
7 granted under terms provided in the LICENSE file distributed
14 This release no longer works with Python versions prior to 3.9 since it
15 relies on the new zoneinfo module from the 3.9 standard library, and may
16 need the pytz library from PyPI if your system lacks time zone data.
18 Added support for tornado watches and warnings, as well as fixing some
19 bugs which caused certain alerts to fail to be found or to get filtered
20 out prior to their intended expiration times. A new command line and
21 configuration option for document expiration delay is included,
22 defaulting to 1 hour. Data sources have also been updated, including
23 2023 census locations. WX weather zone definitions now include time
24 zones as well, in case they should become necessary in the future.
28 This is planned to be the last release supporting Python 2; starting
29 with the 2.5.0 release, this software will only be usable with Python
32 Refreshed correlation sets and data sources including updating to 2019
33 US Census locations and incorporating public domain airport information
34 from the wonderful ourairports.com community, stopped using the long
35 defunct metar.tbl and zonecatalog.curr.tar files, switched to HTTPS
36 protocol since all the URLs had started redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS
37 anyway, added functionality for fetching forecasts from HTML pages where
38 they're wrapped in preformat tags and included a new forecast zone for
39 the Hong Kong Observatory using this, fixed a few bugs when running
40 under recent Python 3 versions.
44 Fixed a regression in the correlate function which reintroduced the
45 wrong (old) URLs for zone-specific data sources, and corrected the
46 entries in the zones file accordingly.
50 Fixed a bug where the setpath search order was effectively being
53 Updated correlation data is included based on newer 2015 Census data and
54 2016 NWS station and zone lists.
58 The old http://weather.noaa.gov/pub site was deprecated and as of August
59 23 subsequently removed from service. Correlation data files have been
60 updated to use the working http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov URL instead.
62 Updated correlation data is included based on newer 2014 Census data.
64 The correlation data rebuilding process has been improved and more
65 thoroughly documented.
67 Radian floats in correlation data are now truncated to 7 decimal places,
68 significantly reducing rounding error fuzz against future data file
71 The /etc/weather/weatherrc file mentioned in documentation is now
76 The 2.0 release involves a major rewrite of the underlying code and
77 addition of large volumes of previously-unneeded location correlation
78 data. In the Spring of 2011 the USA NOAA/NWS made significant changes to
79 the way they organized and published forecast data such that it could
80 no longer be supported by design assumptions inherent within this
81 utility. Attempts were made to preserve backward compatability with 1.x
82 command-line usage and configuration file formats where possible, but
83 some regressions are unfortunately unavoidable. The aurl, city, flines,
84 furl, id, murl, st and zones options have been removed. Minimal logic
85 was retained to recognize and continue supporting limited use of city,
86 id and st in configuration files, though these are deprecated for
87 eventual removal in a future release.
89 On a positive note, this provided an opportunity to design out
90 some reported bugs and add in numerous requested features. Highlights
93 * Because NOAA/NWS now treats forecast data in the same way as alerts,
94 the alert reporting features are now much better integrated and no
95 longer considered a beta test.
97 * The lack of memorable alert/forecast zone coding in the new scheme
98 drove development of intelligent search functionality, allowing users
99 to find stations and zones through a variety of methods like place
100 names, IATA/FAA/ICAO/FIPS/ZIP codes and even raw coordinates.
102 * To reduce unnecessary load on NOAA/NWS servers, the utility now
103 caches retrieved data for a configurable period of time.
105 * Airport code lists are no longer maintained in configuration (though
106 they are still easily overridden through configuration), and are
107 instead now separately managed in a manner similar to the other
108 pregenerated correlation data.
110 Worth noting, however, is that the new forecast data publication format
111 (now essentially identical to the alert format) is all-caps freeform
112 prose, and not easily parsed as a result. Due to the lengthy nature of
113 this output, piping it through a pager is highly recommended.