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NWS use of RSS

Learn about the early adoption of RSS feeds at the National Weather Service (NWS), including the use of headline teasers, watch/warning updates, hurricane/severe storm feeds, and current observations. Discover how RSS revolutionized weather information access.

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NWS use of RSS

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  1. Robert Bunge OCIO 2/21/06 NWS use of RSS

  2. Early Use of RSS at NWS • First RSS feed – NWS “headlines” published Dec 12, 2002 • New look and feel had a head line teaser section on NWS homepage; • Traditional updates kept corrupting the page; • Midnight email exchange with a NWS IT in Great Fall, MT pointed us to RSS; • Realized it was ideal for weather watch/warning information

  3. Early RSS at NWS • Headline teaser feed created to get feet wet • Used to update homepage headline without having to actually edit the html, and allow others use the information w/o screen scraping • Worked great but: • always fat fingered the date published with vi so the feed would not validate!

  4. Watch/warnings • Weather watch and warning statements are nothing less than news headlines • First were feeds for states/territories • Updated every 1-2 minutes • Quite popular, but users wanted finer detail – counties or zip codes • In addition to RSS, also generate HTML and CAP XML (Common Alerting Protocol) • Ideal for customers who wanted to put NWS alerts on their web pages

  5. Hurricane/Severe Storms • National Hurricane Center started feeds in 2004 • Feed listed active products – maps, forecasts, etc • Storm Prediction Center • Watches and discussions • 2005: NHC feed by storm • Integrated into weather.gov homepage • Automatic updates (yeah!)

  6. Enhanced Watch/warning feeds • Alert feeds for NWS forecast zones • Forecast zone similar to counties • 1,800 feeds updated every 1-2 minutes! • Technical challenge • Dynamic, server loading concerns • 10-15 million downloads per month

  7. Current Observations • Lots of requests for current weather; • Traditional format, METAR, not very easy to parse; • RSS feed easy to put current weather on a web page or on a desk top via any common RSS reader;

  8. Robert Bunge NOAA/NWS OCIO 301-713-1381 x140 robert.bunge@noaa.gov Questions?

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