Wunderground problems

Anyone else having problems getting on to weather underground? Both my brother and I are having problems loading the site on our mobile devices (Apple). For me, the page partially loads and then goes completely blank. Strangely, im able to access users’ webcams / weather stations, but not the official locations forecasts or historical data. The site seems to still work on my desktop however. I’ve tried all the usual fixes - shutting down device, clearing caches and cookies, etc. have done an Internet search on the problem but not finding any info.

It’s a Bummer because I use the site extensively…

I had problems for a time on my desktop (Windows 10) but they seem to have fixed it. I do know that for a time some of the folks who have the weather stations were upset over things. So it’s not just you.

Good time to check out other weather options, such as national weather service.
(I remember being tickled when Time Warner was refusing to pay for The Weather Channel or something. I was tickled to see just the weather and not all the pomp and circumstance that is the ‘global warming channel’)

I really like the Wunderground interface and presentation, but the information from many Wunderground stations is all over the place - even stations that are almost next door to each other vary by more than 5 degrees.

On the other hand, the data from the NWS sensors at my local airports is accurate. I expect their sensors are routinely calibrated against a certified standard to insure they are correct.

.

I agree about TWC, you get 14 hours of actual weather, and 10 hours of reality shows. They have turned into the MTV of weather. Their cloying, self-aggrandizing commercials are a hoot.

If you’re lucky you can get Weather Nation, which isn’t as flashy, but it’s 24/7 WX. We get it on Dish Network.

1 Like

Blueberrythrill, that may not be bad reporting. I had minus 5 one time in North Carolina, and my neighbor on the other side of the street had 17.
And in another instance, in Somerset KY some 25 or so years ago, I was listening to the radio and they said 27…(this was around 6:30 a.m as I drove to work.)…and I had a new cell phone about the size of a woman’s purse…so I called and the DJ answered live on air. I told him I just looked and had 47 at my house. He kinda laughed and made some comment about not answering the phone next time.
These variations are real. Especially when it’s not windy.

A 22 degree variation in temperature from one side of the road to the other is almost unbelievable. Did you have a chance to measure the temperature on both sides of the road with the same thermometer at the same height? I wonder if some of the difference was a result of the thermometers?

The accuracy of most thermometers is terrible, both digital and analog - especially the analog ones with the big dials. I can set 4 better quality thermometers side by side and they produce 4 different temps with as much as 3 or 4 degrees difference. That’s a lot of measurement error.

I understand that elevation, aspect, micro-climate and wind can have a big impact too

I solved my problem with a calibration certified orchard thermometer placed in a homemade Stevenson screen box facing north at 4 feet high that sits in the center of my orchard. I can set less expensive thermometers in the same box for comparison purposes and see about how much offset I need to add to the cheaper thermometers to get more accuracy.

1 Like

I think some stations are just in very poor locations to get accurate readings. The old lets place a Temp sensor in the middle of a blacktop parking lot. I’d agree that the official NWS readings are probably dead on, although if you are near one, even these cheap home stations can be very close…mine seems to run about dead on with the airport reading overnight, but during the day the airport seems to run warmer then mine. Watching my car as i travel from home into the city, its almost always a few degrees warmer when you get into the concrete jungle.

Yeah, case in point: My weather underground station- in a local landscape minimum, also known as, my backyard. Of course, this is important to me as this is where my trees are.

I use weather underground because they are kind enough to store my data for free with not much hassle. As long as my internet is working my “bridge” reports the data to WU and I can go back to look at what the daily temps were for a date back in Dec 2017 if I want to.

Low temps in my backyard can be as much or more than 5 degrees lower than the closest airport.

1 Like

Oh, I can appreciate your comment. And no, I didn’t take my thermometer over to his place, but I did walk over and gander at his thermometer…for I wasn’t convinced without eyeballing it for myself. (We had talked on the phone and shared our ‘how cold did it get last night’ stories.)

Another comment…perhaps 30 years ago when unemployed or whatever, I sold advertising. Including thermometers with ads on them.

I wondered how accurate the thermometers were…so I laid 100 out and read them all. About 95 were within a degree and a half of each other, and the outliers weren’t off bad…maybe 3 degrees at most.

So, that was ‘educational’ so far as the thermometers made by the company I represented for a year or so…way back when.

Blueberry:

Sounds like they made pretty good stuff compared to what I see today! I have tried several thermometer brands and better known brands don’t seem to be more accurate than others. I was surprised to find that some of the digital thermometers were not as accurate as the analog versions

I just about bought a weather station like the stuff used on Wunderground but I was not sure I could get the data into the apple disease prediction model I wanted to use. Fortunately I stumbled into the NEWA website from Cornell which feeds data from lots or airports and commercial orchards into their modeling software. I use it to predict Fireblight, Scab and SB/FS. The temperature, humidity, rain and leaf wetness are also helpful but it does not include wind speed or archive historical data like Wunderground.

http://newa.nrcc.cornell.edu/newaModel/apple_disease

1 Like