AWeather is a free/open source application which has been
designed to integrate and visualize high-quality meteorological
data using an interactive Virtual Globe interface suitable for
a wide range of users including weather enthusiasts, academics,
and professionals.
It is designed to provide more information than is typically
available from weather widgets and simple desktop applications.
At the same time, it strives to be simpler and easier to use
than existing meteorological software packages such as GEMPAK
and IDV.
Currently AWeather only displays data provided by the United
States National Weather Service.
Features
Working
High quality data sources
Level-II archives
Conus NEXRAD imagery
Volume display of dBZ iso surfaces
Storm based and county based
warning/watch/advisory displays
Virtual Globe base rendering
Including terrain, satellite, and map imagery
GPS tracking using GPSd (Linux only)
Real-time and offline mode
Auto-updating
Fullscreen mode
Planned
Additional data sources
Surface data (temp., humidity, etc)
Derived NEXRAD data
Storm relative motion
Compost reflective
Echo tops
Vertical cross sections
Spotter network intergration
Animation
Licencing
AWeather is free software licensed under the terms of the
GNU GPL.
As such, it can be used by any individuals or organizations
without any license fees or royalties.
Behind the scenes, mouse support in Grits
has been much improved
This release was a little bit faster than previous releases.
Hopefully additional improvements to the alerts plugin
can be made incrementally during the 0.x.x releases.
Update: AWeather 0.5 is also compatible with the
newly released RSL v1.41
2011-06-13
Started work on this new website. Lots of progress in AWeather as well:
Merged support for isosurfaces to the main branch (Finally!)
Added an option to automatically refresh after a timeout
New fullscreen mode
2010-05-17
AWeather 0.4.1:
Win32 fixes and improved debug support
Fix bug with daylight savings time
Function to clear old cache entries
2010-05-14
AWeather 0.4:
Conus radar images
Multiple radars support
Gentoo, Ubuntu, MS Windows and source packages are available
2009-11-09
AWeather 0.3.0 released, based on libgis but still rather
buggy.
2009-10-24
AWeather 0.2.3 (maintenance release).
Added a Application menu entry and a few build/runtime fixes.
2009-09-02
The source repository has been migrated to Git. A lot of
progress is being made on libgis, which is now able to display
a virtual globe using data from NASA servers.
<% } %>
<% void print_manual(void) { %>
<% print_file("manual.inc"); %>
<% } %>
<% void print_screenshots(void) { %>
AWeather provides a consistent user interface that allows the
user to zoom in from a high level view of the entire Earth down
to regional and mesoscale views.
<% print_screen("synop"); %>
High level view using Grits
<% print_screen("region"); %>
Regional view over the midwest
<% print_screen("meso"); %>
Mesoscale view of a tornadic system
<% print_screen("iso"); %>
Close up showing a 52.5 dBZ isosurface
<% print_screen("alert"); %>
Current severe weather alerts for the CONUS
<% } %>
<% void print_download(void) { %>
Stable releases
While AWeather won't be considered stable until version 1.0,
these are as close to stable as you can get until then
AWeather has direct dependencies on Grits, RSL, among other things
Currently building and running AWeather requires the
exact same version of Grits to be installed
(This may change in the near future as the software stabilizes)
<% } %>
<% void print_grits(void) { %>
Grits is a Virtual Globe library developed along side AWeather,
but desigend to be usable by other program as well.
It is differentiated from other Virtual Globes such as Google
Earth, NASA World Wind, and KDE Marble in that it is developed
primairily as a library that is used by other programs, such as
AWeather, rather than providing it's own user interface.
<% print_screen("grits"); %>
Grits without any plugins
<% print_screen("plugins"); %>
Satellite and Environment plugins
<% print_screen("terrain"); %>
Elevation plugin showing a mountain
<% } %>
<% void print_rsl(void) { %>
Radar Software Library
AWeather has at times needed a custom version of the
TRMM Radar Software Library
for accessing Level-II radar files. However, most of the changes have
since been incorporated into RSL Version 1.41, which can also be used
with AWeather. Some remaining changes exist though and are mostly
related to code organization and compiler warnings.
AWeather is a free real-time weather data viewer designed for weather enthusiasts.
AWeather is not a weather widget/dockapp that displays a pre-computed forecast.
It is designed to be an easy to use program that integrates a
variety of meteorological data in simple unified interface;
see the about page for more details.
Detailed Level-II NEXRAD radar
3D volume rendering
Dual-pole support
Online and offline modes
Data caching
Automatic updating
Warning/Watch/Advisory display
GPS tracking and logging
Surface and map overlays
Terrain rendering
<% print_screen("stormbased"); %>
AWeather showing storm based warnings
on top of Level-II radar imagery