Software for Weather Reports

There’s not much we can do about the weather, but what about weather forecasts?

Local and network television weather segments have their shortcomings, unless you watch them for the stand-up comedy or the adoptable pets, or to see if your great aunt’s 100th-birthday picture will be shown.

Newspaper weather pages are more serious, but they can’t show you current conditions.

WeatherBrief ($53) from WeatherBank Inc. of Salt Lake City allows you to get up-to-the-minute weather reports and forecasts virtually worldwide, anytime you want, with an IBM or compatible personal computer. You will need a modem and a color monitor displaying either EGA or VGA graphics, which are two different graphic standards set by IBM in recent years.

What you are buying is a sophisticated communications program that lets your computer dial into WeatherBank’s computer database of weather products and retrieve just the ones you want.

The company charges you by the minute for the time that you are connected to its computer, at rates ranging from 20 cents to 43 cents per minute, depending on when and how the call is placed. You could spend a small fortune if you got carried away, which is true of all computer data services. But in just a minute or two, you can get a huge amount of information.

The WeatherBrief software makes the information retrieval about as fast and efficient as it could be. First, most of the maps and other graphics features that you’ll see on your screen are actually contained in the software loaded onto your PC. The map data that you download (retrieve) from WeatherBank comes in the form of overlays for the map outlines that you already have.

For instance, when you receive a map of the current National Weather Service radar for the southwestern United States, what you receive is a data set that tells WeatherBrief where to overlay precipitation circles on the map and what color to make them, indicating light, moderate, heavy or very heavy rain.

The program design saves you connect-time charges because you don’t have to pay to receive fixed data, such as the outlines of the maps, over and over again.

WeatherBrief also automates your connection with the WeatherBank computer. Before you instruct your PC to place the call, you run through a selection process in WeatherBrief in which you select from its extensive list of products just those items that you want to receive.

You could instruct it to just retrieve the latest National Weather Service forecast for the West Coast, along with maps showing the chance of precipitation and expected windy areas, for instance.

Or you could choose a list up to 300 items long, including a number of custom reports prepared by WeatherBank.

No matter what you choose, the WeatherBrief software takes care of actually making all the on-line requests for you. You don’t have to learn any sign-on or other commands. In fact, you never even see them on your screen.

Instead, what you see is a summary of your account for using the service. (It costs $25 to open an account, and thereafter you can add to it by electronically authorizing credit card charges.) The screen shows the balance remaining in your account, the per-minute charge in effect and a rolling progress report that tallies data-transfer statistics.

When everything you asked for is received, the computer automatically ends the call and then shows you how many minutes and seconds you were connected and how much it cost.

The on-line cost depends on whether you use WeatherBank’s toll-free 800 number or call them long distance at their Salt Lake City number. Connection charges for the latter are 20 cents a minute. The long-distance charges will, of course, add to that.

If you use the toll-free number, it costs 43 cents per minute weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mountain time, 39 cents from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. and 35 cents overnight. The lowest rate also applies from 8 p.m. Friday until 8 a.m. Monday. Rates are the same whether you have a 300-, 1,200- or 2,400-baud modem, so you’ll definitely save money with 2,400 baud.

Most of the data is quickly and cheaply obtained. But beware of the satellite photos. Because they are digitized pictures, they take a lot of data to transfer. And they aren’t as clear as you will see on television or in the newspaper because of the lower resolution of the computer screen, even with VGA graphics.

Some representative sessions: With a log-on time of 3 minutes and 21 seconds, I received color radar maps of the Northwest and Southwest for the current hour, maps depicting cloud cover for the same areas and maps showing chance of precipitation, stated in percent.

Next came maps for the same two areas showing actual precipitation the day before and maps forecasting surface winds for the current day. Then there was a pair of maps for the entire country, one showing actual high temperatures and the other actual low temperatures.

A particularly fascinating map showed me lightning strikes that had occurred within the past few moments around the United States. It was even color-coded to show whether a strike was from the ground to the clouds or from clouds to ground. That map, combined with radar maps, will give a very good indication of current storm activity.

I also got the afternoon weather photo from the satellite that focuses on the Western United States. It took about as long to receive as the rest of the data combined.

Much of that is available on television, especially the Weather Channel on cable, but you can get some data that just isn’t otherwise available.

For instance, I wanted to know what the weather is like in Alaska, where my daughter is camped out for the summer on an ornithology expedition.

It took only a couple of minutes off-line to select the zoned Alaska forecasts and latest observation reports that I wanted and 26 cents worth of time on the toll-free line to get those reports. The detail was wonderful. I had a table of information for 49 Alaska reporting points with current sky, temperature, wind, forecast high and low, humidity, barometer and yesterday’s high and low temperatures and precipitation. (It was cold and cloudy, weather fit for the birds, no doubt.)

Among the custom reports that WeatherBank has available are forecasts for the major interstate highways. The Interstate 5 forecast went from Tijuana to Vancouver, British Columbia, with 10 points along the way. The western portion of Interstate 70 carried 11 thumbnail forecasts from Green River, Wyo., to Indianapolis.

Whatever your interest, from aviation to agriculture, maps and reports are available to help you cope with the weather. If you also want jokes, cute puppies and birthday pictures of the elderly, you’ll just have to watch television.

Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.

WEATHERBRIEF Software to turn a PC into a worldwide weather station.

Features: Communications software to automatically access WeatherBank Inc.’s database of National Weather Service and proprietary custom reports and maps.

Requirements: IBM PC or compatible, 512 kilobytes of memory, a hard disk with at least two megabytes of storage available, a modem and a color monitor displaying either EGA or VGA graphics.

Publisher: WeatherBank Inc., 2185 South 3600 West, Salt Lake City, Utah 84119. Phone: (801) 530-3131.

Los Angeles Times