Updates Complete – Rain Coming – More Minor Changes

Thanks for your patience

I’ve spent most of the last few days (and some nights 😂 ) working on updating the Raspberry Pi that serves all of the data to this website. Everything is up to date and working.

The featured image is what I’ve been staring at a lot over the past few days.

Here’s a quick list of things that were updated/changed on the server and the blog.

Additions/Improvements

• Almanac View and Data View are updated and are now *inside* the blog. All menus and links now point to the internal blog link.
• Experimental Data View added. This is a development I am helping to test. It is a reworking of the Data View (called Weather34) by a few people. It might work, but also might break.
• The Almanac View has a new design. I will be increasing the size of the graphs so that you can download larger versions. Also note there is an “All Time” value included. All Time in this context refers only to this station (since 2005).
• The Data View now includes a module for Earthquakes. I may switch this up periodically if I get the webcam working again.
• I’ve gone through every single link in the menu. Nearly all of them needed to be updated in some way and some were dead so I removed them or replaced them with like-information. The menu includes:
  • Under “Home” a link to the home page, to the blog page that includes all recent blog entries, and the Privacy and Christmas Lights page
  • Under “Data View”, a link to the regular “Data View” and “Experimental” View
  • Under “Reports and Links”, nearly all of these links have been updated! There is a new link to SpotWx Forecasts, the new US Tsunami and Earthquake sites, and the ACRD Tsunami Zone Map.
  • All Environment Canada links are updated
  • All Island Weather links are updated (though unfortunately many of them are offline)
  • All Marine links are updated including to the new Government of Canada Tides website
  • All Fire, Smoke and River links are updated including to the Sproat and Ash River gauges.
  • BC Ferries and DriveBC links are updated.
  • Coming Soon Tonight I will add links to all the different places that you can see data from this and other stations. You might be surprised how many different services this weather station is reporting to!
• I’ve removed a number of old plugins, pages and other stuff from the blog that had built up over time. I’m hopeful this will speed up and make the site more reliable. If there is something missing that you used, please let me know as I can likely restore it.
• I’ve added a couple plugins that are supposed to integrate the website more into “The Fediverse” (Mastodon is a part of the Fediverse). I might explore that a bit more later.
• There is now a dedicated “AlberniweatherBot” on Mastodon that posts updates direct from the station every few hours. I have also moved Alberniweather’s social media presence to Mastodon with posts there being auto-repeated to Twitter. I am not monitoring Twitter more than once or twice a day.

Deletions/Other Changes

• The Air Quality data from Purple Air is having issues that are unrelated to this station but is making ti difficult to have that data appear here. The Purple Air sensor itself is still operational though and you can see it on the Air Quality page.
• Removed all ads from the website. I was hoping they might produce some revenue to help pay for the hosting, but it produced nothing but annoying and wasteful banners.
• Removed “Mini View” (if you were using this view, please let me know and I can reactivate it)
• Removed some things from the sidebar that no longer made sense.
• The graphs have changed slightly. I’ll be tweaking them, making them available in larger versions as well.
• I am trying to remove the repeated forecasts and sidebar stuff from the bottom of the front-page. I’ll be darned if I can figure out where that is being controlled!
• That’s about it! If you see anything that is bugging you don’t hesitate to let me know.

More minor tweaks

I have a few more tweaks and things (like links to other station data sources) that I want to do, but the major stuff is done. If you have any suggestions put them in a comment below! 🙂

Back to the Weather!

A large front will sweep over the Island overnight tonight.

It will produce rain through Friday and Friday night.

On Saturday we start what looks like a relatively dry and cool spell but nothing as cold as we saw in December. Next precipitation may occur Monday but seems more likely to be as far as next Thursday.

I hope all of you have had a chance to rest with family and friends this holiday season.

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