• he/they

Web and mobile developer, telepathic bridge, worm power, vitality drink

posts from @vavassor tagged #weather

also:

To use my weather library in an actual app, I've been building out an example site for NWS client. Warning: it asks for location permissions on clicking that link and will continue to ask if you don't select "Remember my location".

It's rough and I've been mainly focusing on adding functionality. Not at all on visual design or trying to make it easy to use, or navigate.

Below are ideas for changes.

  • Add more information about radar stations, servers, etc.
  • Add pages for aviation weather data.
  • Add some way to navigate or filter products, stations, and zones. Right now it kinda just spews some recent data out in a table. So most of the data is inaccessible.
  • Style links differently from normal text so you can tell links apart.
  • Add icons to represent the current forecast. (partly cloudy, scattered showers, etc.)
  • Add some kind of maps. This would mostly be to help select areas.
  • Make the whole site prettier.


I recently learned that there's a publicly-funded National Weather Service API in the United States. It's a service for weather data and forecasts.

I made nws-client to help use the API. Mainly because I couldn't find an official package on npm and I needed Typescript types. The data returned from the service is complex, so it's pretty tedious to write yourself.

The library works but it's awkward to use. I haven't written any documentation and I'm trying to create example projects. Mainly so I can understand how users might want to use the library. And hopefully learn how to make it less awkward.

Also because JavaScript is used in a ton of different frameworks and types of apps, which may have different expectations. I'm going to try and cover web apps, mobile apps (react native), desktop apps (electron), and web services (node js).