Web Weather Today
A few nights ago, I turned
on Channel 4 to watch the 6 p.m. weather forecast. Or rather, I turned on
Channel 4 to watch meteorologist Bob Ryan. It was a deeply satisfying six
minutes. Bob's brow was furrowed; his jaw was tense. A cold front, he warned,
had "gathered strength in the Canadian Rockies" and "cut a swath across the
Midwest." It was now "bearing down on Washington [D.C.],
threatening to wallop the Washington area with 6 to 8 inches of snow."
Then his mouth relaxed slightly. He said that a high-pressure system was
"building in the Southeast" and would shoot a "blast of warm air" up the
Atlantic coast. Would it reach us in time to fend off the snow? Bob was
hopeful.
American
weather forecasters like to say that the United States has the most exciting
weather in the world. It's biblical--from hurricanes to blizzards, droughts to
floods, and the occasional plague of locusts for good measure. I don't know if
the United States does have the most exciting weather, but it certainly has the
most exciting weather forecasts. They, too, are biblical. The ancient Greeks
ascribed lightning to Zeus; we haven't made much progress. The weather forecast
is still an epic, a story of God's war with man. Hot and cold air masses
"clash," storms "strike," and sweeping "fronts" ravage the nation. The forecast
is a tale of heroes (the noble high-pressure system), savage villains
(Hurricane Andrew), and omnipotent, inexplicable deities (El Niño, the Jet
Stream). I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels a frisson when a
forecaster announces that a cold front is "descending" from Canada--as if some
malevolent Arctic god were coming to exact revenge for the sins of
Washington.
Weather, in short, is a crackling good story, infused with
enough drama to sustain local news broadcasts, millions of water-cooler
conversations, and an entire cable channel. So imagine my excitement when I
stumbled upon the Web weather industry. Here was a world of
weather--24-hours-a-day weather, personalized weather, global weather, fishing
weather, flying weather, farming weather, e-mail weather, graphics weather,
text weather. Its breadth boggles the mind. CNN forecasts day
and night on its snazzy weather site. So do USA Today,
MSNBC, and The Weather Channel (which has claimed the best weather address
on the Web). Other Web forecasters include weatherOnline, INTELLICAST, WeatherNet, TVWeather, AccuWeather, Geocities, Canada's The Weather Network, BBC Weather, and the
National Weather
Service--to name only the mainstream sites.
There is, of course, something obviously ironic
about all this Web weather: The Web doesn't have any weather (unless you count
the hot air that envelops most newsgroups). In fact, you could argue that the
entire point of cyberspace is to have no weather, to liberate us from
the mundane and inconvenient physical world. But the Web will have
weather, weather or not.
Indeed,
Web weather technology is as sophisticated as it gets. The sites make
television's Weather Channel look amateurish (or rather, even more amateurish
than it already looks). All the sites are constantly updated. You never have to
wait for a forecast. The sites are both easy to navigate and comprehensive. On
most, a few mouse clicks will retrieve the five-day forecast for any ZIP code,
any city, any state, any nation--complete with smiling sun/frowning raindrop
animations. You like satellite photos? The Web lets you download current
satellite images of any corner of the earth. (On several sites, you can string
together the last few hours of satellite photos into a cloud movie.) Are you
big on ground radar? Most sites offer pictures from more than 100 Dopplers.
Many will let you monitor earthquake activity, ozone levels, humidity, and
flood threats.
All the sites rely on essentially the same package of NWS
data, satellite photos, and Doppler images, so they do have a certain
laundry-detergent quality: same powder, different box. (This monotony is
reminiscent of sports Web sites, which also draw from a single well of data.)
So sites strive desperately to build brand identity. Some make four-day
forecasts instead of five-day forecasts. Some dispense with jaunty graphics,
delivering temperatures in sober gray text. Some niche-market to pilots,
sailors, or farmers. CNN and the Weather Channel supply a weather newswire
("Light snow dusts the Dakotas, West is dry"). An illustrated weather
encyclopedia accompanies USA Today 's site. And weatherOnline reviews
weather media and will soon launch The Adventures of Weatherboy , a
cartoon based on the exploits (such as they are) of a real-life teen weather
forecaster. The grand prize for gimmickry goes to AccuWeather.com. It devotes an entire Web page to the most
important weather in the world: mine. When the password works (which is
rarely), I can view "David Plotz's Personal AccuWeather TM ." This
page has my five-day forecast (well, Washington, D.C.'s), a chart of
my current weather conditions (actually National Airport's); and a radar
map centered over my house (Sterling, Va., but who's counting). It's
exactly the same information available on all the other Web weather sites, but
it's got my name on it.
At this
point, I am supposed to pause to pay homage to the miraculous Internet. Web
weather, I should say, displays all the medium's virtues: Efficiency!
Convenience! Personalized service! A rich supply--no, a surfeit --of
useful information! How extremely useful it is!
Too useful, actually. Even the best Web weather
sites-- USA Today , INTELLICAST, The Weather Channel--manage to do what I
thought was impossible: They make weather boring. Following weather on the Web
is like following baseball by reading scorecards. The weather forecast is more
than "rain." You must also hear the story of the rain. Where is it coming from?
Whose fault is it? Canada's? The Great Lakes'? The Bermuda High's? What kind of
rain is it? When it will arrive? Will the Jet Stream protect us from it? Is it
"much-needed" or "unwelcome"? You do need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows.
But the
Web dispenses with all that. The cyberforecast is purely mechanical and purely
boring. Even the Web's supposed innovation--individualized forecasts--is
depressing. We no longer make common cause against the weather god. Now I have
my weather--David Plotz's Personal AccuWeather TM --and you have
yours.
Fortunately, not all Web weather is such a drag. Commercial
sites comprise only a fraction of online meteorology. Just as it has for New
Jersey Nets fans and Whitewater conspiracists and foot fetishists, the Web has
also given birth to a community of weather fanatics. Granted, theirs is a most
peculiar kingdom. It feels almost exactly like a normal place--you can shop,
travel, talk, learn, watch movies--except there is only one subject:
weather.
Amateur
meteorologists, for example, make chitchat at two Usenet newsgroups devoted to
general weather (sci.geo.meteorology and uk.sci.weather). True devotees talk
shop at even more specialized groups, such as one on Northeastern weather
(ne.weather), whose recent conversation topics included the great blizzard of
1978 and the freak snowstorm of May 1977. Weather obsessives shop on the Web.
Three--count 'em--online weather stores, including the WeatherStore, hawk
meteorological gizmos. (Favorite gizmo: the weather
radio, which is tuned permanently to National Weather Service broadcasts.)
You can plan a weather holiday on the Web: At least two outfits, including
Cloud 9
Tours, sell "storm-chasing tours" online. (Designed for folks who've
watched Twister too many times, these "vacations" consist of spending
two weeks driving a van around the bleakest parts of the Midwest hunting for
tornadoes.) Weather voyeurs can sneak a glance at more than 100 weather cameras
filming the skies in other cities. Weather games, weather videos, weather
prizes--they have all found their way to the Web. There is even weather
identity politics: "Women in Weather" profiles female meteorologists and hosts
discussions about topics female and meteorological ("We're both meteorologists
... how will we both get jobs in the same place?").
It may be the disaster sites that best capture the spirit
of the weather Web. Dozens and dozens of sites, such as Eye on the
World, celebrate tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts, and--of
course--tornadoes. Most are illustrated with brutal photos of beached
ships, downed trees, and shattered houses. These sites are, I think, the
meteorological equivalent of snuff films. They prove that even when all you
care about is weather, the Web still has plenty of dirty pictures to show
you.
