Happy July!
Throughout June we've been in development mode creating new features. We added or change 105 things in June that you may or may not notice. Story posts have been few and that is okay. We continue to look ahead keeping things relaxed in the present. Here are some new things you'll notice on the website.
Chase map created every five minutes, gif loops for 3 hr and 24hr!
- Chase Map - We have made our maps even better by integrating spotternetwork GPS positions! We created a new map type refreshed every 5 minutes. By default, storm chasers and spotters will appear as a small gray dot. Chasers in a predefined group will have bigger, colored dots along with two letter abbreviation. Right now the only group in our system are Wisconsin Weather admins. We have built it to allow more groups to be added however there is a limit. Please contact us if you would like your group added. In GIF loop testing it's been a blast to an absolute blast to watch dots cross the region back and forth honing in on storms and areas. Dots flash as weather moves in and people check in. Totally awesome! Super excited.
Interactive Chase Map
- Interactive Chase Map - Major upgrades to the interactive map viewer, now called Chase Map designed for storm chasers! You can now turn on spotternetwork positions (off by default)! This project came from Wisconsin Weather admins who are in constant contact via social media but can't easily find GPS locations for each other. On the road, clicking individual spotter dots to see who is who is very dangerous. So through groups, we are able to quickly see where the guys are. We did not include device geolocation so you will need to be updating your spotternet dot to see your position (might not be the best experience). You can request to be added as group through contacting us but spots are limited and membership is required. We also separated watches from warnings, added new timestamp in the bottom left corner, and ability to pause radar loop. Expect to see more social media graphics from this tool.
- Interactive Chase Map Tables - Reports are now viewable in table format beneath the map! Filtering, sorting enabled! We are waiting on the watches and warnings side of things.
- New Navigation menu - We are making room for future projects!
- Recent Maps - We made the last 7 days of archive maps available to the public via the History navigation button. It's not perfect and a little difficult to use but will allow members to find maps. I imagine storm chasers looking for radar grabs after an event that they didn't have an opportunity to save during.
Heat index map!
- Heat Index Map - Finally added but is it too late?
- Profile Composer - Updated the composer so that reports can be made from your profile page. Please note that reports are always publicly view-able regardless of your privacy mode.
- Password Recovery - This is now immediately available on the login page instead of making people guess first.
- New Footer - Hope you like!
- Increased storm report update frequency to every 1 min.
- Many small changes across the website.
One unresolved issue remains, the missing scroll bar; which we cannot seem to fix. No idea. 80-90% of our page traffic is mobile or tablet so we're okay with it, but still frustrating. Also noticed plenty of over-sending with warning alert emails last weekend. This has to do with the odd way warning feeds are sent from the NWS. Working on new feeds.
If you have any questions, concerns or come across any critical errors, please contact us! You will need to clear your cache to see the new changes. As always, thank you for supporting our website! ðŸ˜
Wisconsin Weather Team