weatherUnderground-WundergroundWeatherProvider

The Wunderground Weather Provider type is available, providing that the station’s host platform has both the weather and weatherUnderground modules installed. The Wunderground Weather Provider interfaces to XML feeds from the Weather Underground® (wunderground.com), appropriate for locations outside of the United States (and its NWS). A developer account (and key ID) is needed from the Weather API of wunderground.com.

IMPORTANT: The Weather Underground has discontinued free service as of December 31, 2018. This will impact those users who utilize a free Weather Underground key in conjunction with our WUnderground Provider. Once the service is discontinued, users can expect to see their weather reports highlighted as orange with stale data. Alternative options to receive weather from other service providers are available. Note, the National Weather Service provider will continue to work for North America users.

NOTE: In Niagara 4.10 and later, for those who currently use an API key, you can continue to use the WUnderground Provider however Weather Underground may require you to generate a new key.

The Wunderground Weather Provider is an available type when adding a WeatherReport in the Weather Manager, providing that the weatherUnderground module is installed (along with the weather module). See it in the drop-down Type to Add field in the New dialog when adding a new WeatherReport.

Figure 32. Wunderground Weather Provider in initial New dialog, type selection

Usage is intended for “international weather”, meaning locales outside of the U.S. (and/or areas served by U.S. NWS reports). Otherwise, it is recommend to use the default type: NwsWeatherProvider.

The following requirements and limitations apply when using the Wunderground Weather Provider:

You require a Weather API “key ID” from wunderground.com, received after opening a developer account. Costs range from free to some tiered monthly fee, based on usage (calls/day and calls/minute). At the time of this document, find more details at: www.wunderground.com/weather/api
When adding a new Wunderground Weather Provider, you enter your key ID string.
Although forecasting components and current conditions are available, currently there is no Niagara support for advisories issued through a Wunderground Weather Provider. Thus, the AdvisoryContainer component under the CurrentConditions of such a WeatherReport will remain empty.
Air quality properties (Ozone, Particulate Matter) and Heat Index of CurrentConditions also remain at null values. Thus, the Current Air Quality view remains at “unknown”.

When adding, in a secondary New dialog, you enter a weather report name, the known latitude and longitude for the location (in decimal degrees), your unique key ID string.

Figure 33. Secondary New dialog, with latitude, longitude, and API “key ID” issued by wunderground.com

Once added, a connection is made to the weather API at wunderground.com, the location is resolved, and the report is updated, including current conditions and some number of forecast days.

Figure 34. Example property sheet of WeatherReport based on WundergroundWeatherProvider

Note values display in Workbench converted to metric units (as shown above) only if the Workbench user’s options are set for metric, otherwise values appear in English units (degrees F, mph). Web browser access displays values in units according to the user’s Facets, Unit Conversion setting.

Figure 35. Example CurrentConditions property sheet for report based on WundergroundWeatherProvider

A few CurrentConditions properties may be fixed in English values or units—for example “Pressure” (in Hg) vs. millibars (mb) or “Visibility” (mile) vs. kilometers (km).