Live Madison Weather

Check out the live weather in Madison! Go to App >

Check out the source code behind the app! Go to GitHub >

Background

I started college at the University of Wisconsin - Madison during the fall of 2015. After nearly completing a successful year of school, I started working in the Computer Sciences Department in the Computer Sciences Lab (CSL).

The CSL is located in an internal room, thus there are no windows to see the outside. Without the natural sunlight, one can become very anxious. Multiple times, when I left I was disappointed to find it pouring rain outside when it was sunny when I came to work. There had to be a solution…

Enter the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Science (AO&SS) department, conveniently located across the street from the CS building. By chance, I actually interviewed for a web development position in the AO&SS department, but chose the CSL instead. The AO&SS has many projects on their website for all kinds or weather data and space sciencey stuff, but the coolest (in my opinion) projects are the live webcams and live weather data from the top of their 15 story building.

The only logical thing to do with all this data is to rig up a simple web interface for easily viewing it in real time.

The live weather page I put together is very simple. I intended it to be used as a T.V. background or something of that sort. Every 10 seconds the weather information on the page updates (AO&SS reports every 5 seconds, but there’s no need to refresh that much if this is running 24/7 on a T.V. Gotta play nice with their servers!). Also, every 60 seconds, the background image changes to cycle through different views of Madison as seen from the top of the AO&SS building (North, Northeast, East, South, and West).

Screenshots