Important changes to locationforecast and nowcast 2020-12-15

After several months in beta, Nowcast 2.0 is finally officially launched. Both this and Locationforecast have now got a definite date for termination of the old versions.

Continuation of XML format

Based on popular feedback we have decided to continue the XML format for Locationforecast and Nowcast into the foreseeable future. For this purpose we have added a /classic XML variant to Nowcast, which is basically identical to the version 0.9 format. This means porting from the old version should be much faster than rewriting to use JSON.

To support the XML format in the future, we will extend it to include the new symbol codes as introduced in Weathericon 2.0. Please use this instead of the numerical codes which are now deprecated. Starting today the symbol elements will look like this:

<symbol id="PartlyCloud" number="3" code="partlycloudy_day"/>

You can then link this to the partlycloudy_day.png icon which can be downloaded in Weathericon 2.0.

Some future additional changes to the XML format are to be expected. Some time within the next six months we will remove the following elements from the XML format; please don't use them in your clients:

<temperatureProbability unit="probabilitycode" value="0"/>
<windProbability unit="probabilitycode" value="0"/>
<symbolProbability unit="probabilitycode" value="1"/>

Termination of old versions

Now that both products have been finalized, we have decided it is time to say goodbye to the old versions, hailing from 2014 and 2016 respectively. On March 1st, 2021 the following products will no longer be available:

• Locationforecast 1.9
• Nowcast 0.9
• Weathericon 1.1

Please update your systems to use the new version if you haven't already. If you keep running into 403 Forbidden errors, remember that according to the Terms of Service you must identify yourself with a unique User-Agent HTTP request header with contact information.

New version of Yr.no

As some of you may have noticed, yr.no now points to the new version (formerly the mobile site) and the old layout has been moved to retro.yr.no. The latter site is expected to be turned off in the summer of 2021; at the same time the old Yr API (varsel.xml/forecast.xml) will disappear. By this time users must have converted to use Locationforecast/2.0 for continued service.

The Yr developers at NRK are working on making a downloadable dump of the existings locations database, mapping place names to lat/lon coordinates. We'll be back with more information on this once we have something to report.

Minor changes to other products

Sigcharts has gotten a new parameter validdate which makes it possible to see which day a plot is valid for. This is now included in the available list.

Turbulence has had some airports removed and Vigra airport added. We have also enabled search by ICAO code instead of location name; this will become the default search method in the future (which means the links in available will use icao instead of location parameters). We recommend updating your clients to use this at your earliest convenience.

New Nowcast and return of Geosatellite 2020-10-02

Nowcast 2.0 beta

After the very successfull update to our Locationforecast service, we have now upgraded Nowcast to a similar modern spec. New features include:

• a new JSON format, very similar to Locationforecast
• radar precipitation coverage extended from only Norway to include Sweden, Finland and Denmark (currently only northeastern parts)
• real-time corrected temperature forecasts for the whole MEPS area, see the data model documentation

While some parts are still missing (documentation, JSON Schema, radar data for the rest of Denmark) it is currently useable enough that you can familiarize yourself with the new data format and start upgrading your clients. Currently we do not have any estimate for how long the current 0.9 version will be supported.

Geosatellite images

After having been unavailable for two years due to licencing issues, we have finally resolved the situation. Unlike previously when only a small subset was available, we are now able to offer you the whole range of EUMETSAT image products under the CC BY 4.0 license.

With over 4000 different images at any one time this also means that the complete available list is very large and may result in timeouts. We therefore urge you to filter this on your specific requirements, e.g. area, type and size.

Future works in progress

We are currently working on updating our Oceanforecast service to the new JSON standard. We have also started on a new project for improving our map services (as seen on Yr.no). During our cooperation with the University of Oslo we have gotten valuable feedback from students regarding map integrations on mobile app development, but we are also very interested to hear from web developers what kind of maps you would like to see and which protocols and formats you would like to see supported.

If you have any feedback, please send us an email at weatherapi-adm@met.no with the subject "Map feature requests". We will later collate this and use for planning new map products which hopefully should be available next year.