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By
Bill Husted
Cox Newspapers
The
weather this time of year can shift as often as a four-cylinder
car with an automatic transmission. And, in the Midwest
and South, there is the added danger of severe thunderstorms
and tornadoes.
No
list of weather-related Web sites should be attempted without
putting the Weather Channel right at the top of the list.
The site at www.weather.com gets more traffic than any other
site devoted entirely to the weather.
One
of the features of the site is the ability to customize
the start page so you’ll immediately get the weather
information you need for the cities you care about most.
You
can also decide which maps will appear and add other weather-related
items such as travel and airport information.
But
there’s another contender that lacks some of the slickness
of the Weather Channel site yet offers some features that
make it unique on the Web. That’s the Weather Underground
site at www.weatherunderground.com.
For
starters, you can display the information in an incredible
number of languages. Just pick from a list that includes
the ones you’d expect plus some you might not expect
— Bulgarian and Slovak, for instance.
There’s
more, including some things that you may not expect to find
on a weather site.
For
instance, click on the link labeled astronomy and enter
your ZIP code. You’ll be able to see where the stars
and the planets will appear in the night sky in your part
of the country.
When
it comes to the official version of the weather — and
also the place where most weather gathering organizations
get primary data — there’s only one choice: The
National Weather Service. You’ll find that home page
at www.nws.noaa.gov.
Once
there, you’ll find a staggering amount of information.
For instance, you can click on the link called Web sites
and find the National Weather Service office for your area.
The
site offers weather data rolled almost any way you’d
like, including links for short-term forecasts, long-term
outlooks, agricultural weather, and weather watches and
warnings. You’ll also be able to learn the radio frequency
for the Weather Service’s weather warning radio broadcasts
for this area.
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