Digg ThisI was fiddling around last night, looking for a couple of new twists for the site, and I couldn’t get over how hot it was — 94 degrees at the time — so I decided to find a weather plugin for WordPress.
I found WeatherIcon, a nifty, little doo-dad that takes up about 3 lines of code, is modifyable both through the WordPress Dash and your CSS file, and it displays weather information from whatever site you select.
In this case, it’s getting its information through METAR data from Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
It slows the page just a tad, though, which is something I’m not totally happy about; it’ll do for now, however.
So, as I write this, WeatherIcon is telling me that the current tempurature is 94 degrees, with a heat index of 105; the humidity is only listed at about 53%, which I know is incorrect: it’s actually more like 72%, according to the National Weather Service’s Cleveland reporting bureau — which is what all of the local media outlets use.
Otherwise, however, I like this new thingy; the only thing I might change is the icon style. We’ll see.
(71.8 — 65.4 — 6.4 — adjusted by WW)
August 1st, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Interestingly, weather.com has also been reporting low humidity levels all day, while still reporting high heat index values (it was 108F earlier today). I wonder if this means they pull the METAR data as well. Probably do.
If it means anything, I didn’t notice the page being at all slow to load.
And yes, it’s damned well hot enough for me. We don’t have air conditioning in our house, either. Good thing we refinished the basement last summer and the wifi signal reaches down there!
August 1st, 2006 at 11:04 pm
I’ve noticed a major slowdown at times: this time, for instance (as I loaded the comment page), I noticed that it took almost 12 seconds to load the page, which is far slower than it used to take since the redesign.
As far as the humidity levels go, one look at the dew point temperature would tell you that the humidity reading was off: no way that a dew point of 80% of the temperature will give you a 53% humidity rating…
Sorry you don’t have A/C; we don’t either, but it’s coming soon: my furnace is far too old to continue, and we’re going to bite the bullet and get it done. I need to sleep, ya know? ;-)