Backcountry Pilot • Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Not necessarily information about airstrips or airports, but more general info about a greater area or a route of flight.
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Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Hi All -

I am a long time lurker of this site and recent tailwheel endorsed private pilot in Denver Colorado. I created a simple web app to aid my own flight planning, and since a few locals found it useful I wanted to offer it up to anyone interested who may be flying through the area.

I am capturing and graphing weather trending data for many airports located in Colorado (and some outside) and have been capturing hourly since April. A few locals and I have found it useful to see how the pressure is trending and when the calm winds are usually found at various local airports.

http://www.COwx.net

If you find it useful, enjoy!

-dave
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Wow, nice work Dave
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Holy cow that's neat! Good work!
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

ExperimentalAviator wrote:that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.


What are your favorite local airports (that shows up on aviationweather.gov)?
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.


Or an app that others could input airstrips/airports into to customize for other areas.
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

SkySteve wrote:
that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.


Or an app that others could input airstrips/airports into to customize for other areas.


I have been playing around with this actually. The only thing holding me back right right now is that I need to sort out the input validation code to make sure what someone types in is sane (state, city, airport code, Lat and Long in decimal format are the only required fields really)

The only other limiting factor is that not all awos stations report to aviationweather.gov and I have to manually check to make sure a desired airport code has wx data. The flip side is that (at least locally) many of our high mountain passes report wx conditions (as well as other odd non-airfield locations) so it gives a pretty good overall picture of weather patterns if you browse through the data as a whole even where there are no "airports".
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

This. Is. Awesome.

Thanks!
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Nice work, Dave. Can you add the wind direction into the trend data?
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

soyAnarchisto wrote:Nice work, Dave. Can you add the wind direction into the trend data?


Yeah -- I want that in there too and have been trying to get it to show up in the rollover...
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

motosix wrote:
ExperimentalAviator wrote:that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.


What are your favorite local airports (that shows up on aviationweather.gov)?
Salem-SLE, oregon show's up, is Corvallis-CVO possible ?
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

ExperimentalAviator wrote:
motosix wrote:
ExperimentalAviator wrote:that's cool, if not for the time for it i'd say go for a larger area.


What are your favorite local airports (that shows up on aviationweather.gov)?
Salem-SLE, oregon show's up, is Corvallis-CVO possible ?


Absolutely. I added and after a few days the graphs will start filling in.

Unfortunately, since the world revolves around my timezone in my mind, the times are shown in Mountain instead of Pacific. Also, when you first go to the site it centers on Denver, not Oregon. Maybe down the road I will have to add in the ability to localize it to your specific location...
Last edited by motosix on Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

soyAnarchisto wrote:Nice work, Dave. Can you add the wind direction into the trend data?


My lunch gave me inspiration and I was able to figure out how to get the wind direction added into the rollover for you Greg. Enjoy!
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

that's great dave thank's, what about cloud ceiling's ?
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Piling on here, EXCELLENT dave. Big thanks for this. For more qualitative information here's a link to quite a few airport cams, mostly in the Rocky Mountain Region, but also Johnson Crick. I sometimes find it helpful to visually see what's going on out there, and see who's on camera:

http://www.airportview.net/

Thanks. cubscout
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

Great info! Any chance we could link this on FlyColorado.org?

Thanks, Matt
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

ExperimentalAviator wrote:that's great dave thank's, what about cloud ceiling's ?


CLOUDS!? We don't have no stinkin' clouds in Colorado!!

:D

(That is one of the few things I do not parse out of the awos data just yet unfortunately. I will see if I can get that in at some point for you poor people that have to deal with all of that silly water vapor. :) )
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

motosix wrote:I will see if I can get that in at some point for you poor people that have to deal with all of that silly water vapor. :) )


Let them eat cake!

Nice job - this is very cool!
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

mountainmatt wrote:Great info! Any chance we could link this on FlyColorado.org?

Thanks, Matt


Feel free. In fact, if you want to embed an IFRAME right in the site in a smaller window, go right ahead.

Or you have a techie on your side, I wrote a quick public API to allow me to access the data from the backend that collects it every hour. You could use it to put a ticker/graph/whatever for specific passes with trending weather without being forced to display the Google Maps interface. I am just brainstorming; I am happy to help you guys out however you like.

(Patrick R knows about this and has been wicked helpful btw)
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Re: Rocky Mountain Region Weather Trending Website

I see you got the cloud ceiling on there =D>
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