Using METAR data for current/past conditions?

[Mrnofish]

"Current conditions" data from Open Meteo are often inaccurate: this may be a consequence of Open Meteo generating current conditions from models rather than sourcing actual measurements from real weather stations.

Weather Underground used to have an API that could be used to read current conditions from a variety of Weather Stations, including Airports and personal/amateur setups. (Unfortunately and IIRC, when the company switched hands, the API was killed).

Airport data is usually particularly accurate since it's high-end equipment that is used to ensure planes can fly safely.

There are sites that collect and publish METAR data from airports; WUnderground being one of them, of course, but there are others.

I'm not sure how exactly this stuff works behind the scenes, but I smell open data?

Checking current conditions from a METAR site and verifying what went on during the last 24/48 hours is part of my daily weather check routine, but to do that I need to step out of the app and check a different site.

It would be super convienient to have an all-in-one solution that has both forecasts AND current/recent past conditions. (Current being the most important, though recent past is also very useful).

[farfromrefug]

@Mrnofish i am all up for that feature. However it will take sometime to investigate then implement.
If you can do the first step it would help greatly. The idea is to find an Open-Source/Free METAR api which allows the app to request data based on a lat/lon position.
If you find that then i can directly jump to the implementation part

[Mrnofish]

I'll see if I can find something, but I'm afraid meeting all the requirements would be next to impossible.

Airports are generally located by their ICAO code, so if it must be coordinates, then you would need some way to get the code from coordinates.

On that topic, not sure if I'm hallucinating here, but I seem to recall ICAO codes working inside the app but no longer now?

[farfromrefug]

@Mrnofish they never did ;)

[Mrnofish]

By that you mean that you explicitly tested ICAO codes previously?

I have an airport in my favorites added before the Select Location on Map feature (and thus necessarily through text search), and later I realized that the app was using coordinates which were not those of the airport, but instead of a nearby town.

Now that same airport does not turn up in any way, of which I've tried several:

• its two codes (IATA and ICAO)
• the formal name
• the informal name
• its geographical location
• by looking for the word airport in at least two languages, one of them English.

If I look up airport, I'm getting only three results, which are Auckland Airport and Hahn Airport (there are two results with the same name and description).

I also tried looking up La Guardia and JFK, nothing at all.

[farfromrefug]

I am saying the app does not support entering ICAO codes.
And for searching location we use photon which only returns OpenStreetMap features. So no ICAO specific features

[Mrnofish]

Speaking of looking up ICAO codes...

I've checked another couple of apps that get their data from open meteo. Both work fine.

The apps are Bura and Clima. Try e.g. KLGA and they will return New York's La.Guardia.

Bura shows a "geocoding by open meteo" disclaimer at the bottom of the search screen.

[farfromrefug]

@Mrnofish yes they use Open-Meteo for geocoding. I use Photon. Open-Meteo might be working with ICAO but it fails in many other cases:

• wont find many cities here in France like port-vendres
• wont work with many winter stations here in France like 7 laux
• Wont return metadata associated with location in many cases (like address). Though this one might not be a big deal

So i get that you want ICAO codes but the drawbacks are too big. And ICAO might not work but la guardia airport reports the airport correctly

[Mrnofish]

Oh no, that was a misunderstanding. Genuinely sorry about that.

I was not pressing for you to add support for ICAO codes or switch geocoding providers. My last two posts, I was trying to figure out how I could've added an airport inside OSS Weather, what with the feature never being supported explicitly.

Apologies for the mix-up. I really like the app and am really grateful for all the work and effort you put it. That goes double because these days full-featured apps kind of went out of fashion, in favor of sleek-looking apps that do as little as possible.

[farfromrefug]

@Mrnofish no need to apologize! i love those kind of discussions and it really help the app move further!
Thanks for the comment about the app. Really glad you like it.

Now to the original subject with ICAO. You say you want to add airport. what you are interested in is the not the fact you get airport location? What you wait it weather data coming from the airport? If so we go back to the METAR discussion for which right now i dont have a solution

[Mrnofish]

aviationweather.gov has an API for METAR and more.

Their documentation mentions that an API key is necessary for "restricted features" however I haven't been able to find explicit mentions of what features actually require one.

https://aviationweather.gov/data/api/

https://aviationweather.gov/data/api/help/