[rant on]

As I understand it, Accuweather pulls a great deal of it weather info from NOAA and uses its own meteorologists to interpret parts of it. As a matter of fact there is some serious jockeying going on at the moment with commercial weather sites such as Accuweather and Weather.com pressuring NOAA to block private citizens from accessing NOAA information so that these commercial sites would control data access via paid subscription. I take great exception to somebody making money off a service my tax dollars provide then blocking my access to that service. I can see for Scott that Accuweather is an easy way to handle a difficult problem as he surely doesn't have the time to research each resort on a daily basis.

I have found that the NOAA and NWS sites give me as much, if not more info, than the commercial sites. For example: this is the site for National Weather Service Tropical Prediction Center National Hurricane Center ... http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ ... click on Maps and Charts for Ivan.. Hmmm ... now where have I seen that diagram before albeit a bit more gussied up? ... look familiar? Now click on the Discussions link for Ivan and compare the dialog on the storm with that of the talking heads on the Weather channel. Pretty much the same stuff.

All the weather information you could possibly want or need is readily available (for the moment at least) on taxpayer supported government weather sites. There are a couple of private meteorologists that I access during the winter for more long term information ... http://wxrisk.com/ ... is one of the better ones,. Another site I like and have found to be very accurate 3-4 days out is ... http://www.snow-forecast.com/ ... it is subscription based but considerable cheaper than Accuweather and I need only pay for it for the 6 months that constitute the ski season.. A fun solution is to learn to read the pilot weather reports. TAFS, METARS and the like give you precise info for a 6-24 hour time frame. ... long enough for a trip to Wisp or Seven Springs.

So for anyone looking to get more accurate data on whether they will be pond skimming or knee deep in powder, I recommend spending a little time learning where to find the -good-weather info ...

[rant off]

sorry about that ... some things just tick me off

Oh, well, you probably don't want to know what I'm paying for the AccuWeather feed then! (The AccuWeather feed is actually the single greatest expense I have -- greater than even the server colocation fees.)

I have looked into grabbing data directly from NOAA in the past.. From a programmer's perspective, that would be very easy to do. But their servers simply could not handle the load if commercial sites like DCSki kept pinging on them for weather data, so I decided early on not to pursue that course.

AccuWeather does have their own meteorologists, but their greatest value (to me) is that they do a lot of data massaging to get it in a format that is very easy to parse. I take that raw data and then add my own value to it, for example using it to generate snowmaking forecasts. (I don't know how many of you rely on that, but my pulse quickens whenever the forecast shows lots of snow coming out of the snowguns. ) AccuWeather maintains a number of servers and connects to DCSki every fifteen minutes to upload the raw weather data.

AccuWeather leases a snow condition feed from SnoCountry, which pretty much has a monopoly on condition reporting in the U.S. They gather daily information from all ski resorts and put it into a standard format and also (allegedly) try to verify that resorts are being accurate. I could lease that feed directly from SnoCountry, but when I checked into that several years ago, it would be over $2,500 per year. Ouch! AccuWeather pays that fee and then re-sells the feed to sites like DCSki and CNN.com. (The SnoCountry license allows commercial companies to resell the data.) So it's cheaper to get that data through AccuWeather, even though I don't believe AccuWeather changes the data one bit.

Writing my own scripts to grab weather conditions from individual resorts (e.g., pulling data from their web site) would be nearly impossible -- resorts all use different formats, with different levels of consistency in their reporting, and frequently change the layout of the formats. I could set up a system that allowed resorts to submit their daily data directly to DCSki, but they wouldn't want the extra effort, since they already do it for SnoCountry, which is really the industry clearinghouse. SnoCountry does a pretty good job gathering all the data together and putting it in a structured format. And I think they've got a direct line to resorts; it's definitely in the best interest of resorts to submit their conditions each day to SnoCountry, since that branches out to all forms of print, electronic, and television media.

I couldn't agree with you more that NOAA data should continue to be free to the citizens who pay taxes to make the whole thing possible. As you said, AccuWeather provides a value-added service to me that makes weather and snow condition reports a whole lot easier (and in the case of snow condition reports, cheaper too). To do that they have to maintain a staff of programmers and a fleet of servers. But they have no business saying that NOAA data shouldn't be free -- that reminds me of Microsoft tactics!

Actually Elkins is 2800' not 2000 feet less than SS.It looks like accuweather tweeks the forcast a little but still uses the CURRENT weather as Elkins.At 11pm Elkins & what the accuweather people are saying is snowshoe are exactly the same.It was 42 degrees at canaan vly this morn..what did the "SS" weather read as a low?There will be times when its dumping powder at 4800' & it will say rain & 35 degrees for the current weather at SS.AWS weather gets readouts from schools,coast guard stations ect..I get the current weather from a school in oakland,md to use as my best read as to whats going on in the highlands..that & the dolly sods NFS site(when its working) I agree the NWS & NOAA rule! There is also a daily obs report that shows all the elevations & precip ect..Any way more power to you Scott & co I'm just nit picking a great site & thanks so much for DCSKI!

Andy:

Try searching here ... http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=26209 ... We have spot checked and compared the top of mountain conditions with Elkins and Hot Springs a number of times using our Kestrel 4000 (really cool handheld weather gadget) and have found the Hot Springs weather is often much closer to Snowshoe values during the ski months.

You can also extrapolate rough temperature data from Elkins at 2000 Ft.. Rule of thumb is subtract 1-2 degrees F for each additional 1000 feet of altitude.

Andy:

Try searching here ... http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=26209 ... We have spot checked and compared the top of mountain conditions with Elkins and Hot Springs a number of times using our Kestrel 4000 (really cool handheld weather gadget) and have found the Hot Springs weather is often much closer to Snowshoe values during the ski months.

You can also extrapolate rough temperature data for Snowshoe from Elkins at 2000 Ft.. Rule of thumb is subtract 1-2 degrees F. for each additional 1000 feet of altitude.

Again, learning to read the flight service weather reports gives you about the best granularity for 6-24 hour weather prediction for a given area.

OOPS! .. sorry, pushed the button twice. seems that if the post you are submitting rolls over to a new page when the current page is full, the software doesn't return you to the new page but the old one therefore making it seem your comment didn't get posted.

Scott ... is this a know issue?

Long time lurker here who was finally inspired to register by this fancy new upgrade to the web site.

If you're looking for more accurate weather info for more remote areas, try this link: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/RLX/HYDCRW

It has several stations in the Charleston region. Even includes elevation. Unfortunately, it doesn't update very often.