Dear WeatherCat citizens of the
USofA,
This morning the National Weather Service in Monterey, CA announced a new service:
Recreational Forecasts. For example, here is the forecast for the extended San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/wrh/rec/?wfo=mtrAnyone with recreational inclinations might be a bit offended by the paltry list of potential activities. Two of my former hobbies were definitely excluded: astronomy and scuba diving. Another former pursuit didn't seem to get proper coverage: sailing. This omission seems particularly odd, since the National Weather Service has a marine forecast - what was so hard about using that?
However, it is a new service so perhaps we need to cut them a little slack. I tried to find out how common it was and it appears to be launched only in a few locations (perhaps 1!)
I used the URL to construct "equivalent" searches for a new other locations in the western half of the United States, but ended up getting only generic pages. Here is the constructed page for San Diego:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/wrh/rec/?wfo=sgxHere is construction for Seattle: (which looks identical)
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/wrh/rec/?wfo=sewHere is the constructed URL for Albuquerque - same image yet again.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/wrh/rec/?wfo=abqI couldn't make any version work for other regions of the country. However, there is a recreational forecast to be found in Georgia:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=recfcst I didn't have a chance to compare this to the offerings on the corporate websites, but last time I looked they were "underwhelming."
So we'll just have to keep an eye on this as work in progress. I suspect that folks on this board can figure out what the weather will be like for whatever recreation they want to indulge in anyway!
Cheers, Edouard