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NEW! Dual Forecast Display: Hourly + Daily

October 21, 2022October 21, 2022 at 10:36 AM by John W.

The City page (home page) now features concurrent hourly & daily graphical forecasts. Previously, you had to select one or the other. We thought it would be helpful to see all that information in a glance rather than forcing visitors to make a choice.

For what it’s worth, your site operators — my wife and I — think this is a big improvement.

For those who don’t enjoy the change, however, you can visit page settings (gear icon in upper right of home page) and select which forecast, if any, you wish to see. You’ll find those options under the heading “Graphical Forecast”. Your preference will be saved as a cookie stored on your device for future visits.

PRO TIP: Since all horizontal scroll bars have been removed (because… ugly!) from the graphical forecast, those who are using a keyboard and mouse only (not a laptop trackpad or mobile device) can see additional forecast icons by clicking on the forecast you wish to scroll and using the right and left arrows on the keyboard. Those on mobile computing devices can continue using the screen (phones/tablets) or trackpad (Macs confirmed; others?) to scroll forecast icons as before. You will find up to 24 icons in the hourly forecast and 13 icons in the daily forecast.

Posted in Forecasts, Site Updates

Maps page bugs… squashed!

September 22, 2022September 22, 2022 at 8:23 AM by John W.

Previously when scrolling the maps page it would sometimes refresh the “Interactive Radar” map.

Also, on smaller viewports (like phones), the map was zoomed in too far. It was difficult to tell if precipitation was nearby but out of view.

Pinching the map to zoom in or out was also difficult and would lead to unwanted refreshes.

I believe all those unwanted behaviors are gone now. In addition, I have made the default zoom level of the map just a bit less.

The map will only change size (& refresh) when you change your device’s orientation (to portrait or landscape). Otherwise, it will remain whatever size it was when you first loaded the page.

Posted in Radar, Site Updates

New Hourly Forecast Feature

September 2, 2022September 2, 2022 at 9:55 AM by John W.

As of today, an hourly forecast from the National Weather Service is now available on the home page. Simply locate the horizontal row of weather icons and look immediately beneath them. You will see a section header: “Quick Forecast”. There you can select either “daily” or “hourly”. Your device should remember your selection over time (assuming you haven’t disabled “cookies”).

This new feature will allow you to see the next 24 hours in terms of temperature, wind, sky conditions and probability of precipitation. You can easily scroll with a finger (mobile) or trackpad (laptop) to see all available hours.

Also, for our “power” users, if you visit page settings on the home page (see gear icon in upper right), there is an option to enable dewpoints on the hourly forecast. This is quite useful in the summer to determine how “muggy” any given day will feel. The general rule of thumb is it starts to feel humid when dewpoints rise to the low 60s or greater. Once it hits 70° (only maybe a few times per summer in Marquette, generally), it’s quite humid. In the winter, when the dewpoint and the temperature begin converging, the likelihood of snow goes up. So there is value to this reading year round.

We hope you enjoy this new feature. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Posted in Forecasts, News, Site Updates

Site to Enter “Night Mode” at Sunset

August 11, 2022September 17, 2022 at 8:53 AM by John W.

In an effort to ease your pupils and preserve your circadian rhythms, this website now features dark background colors with light text from sunset to sunrise.

If you’re unfamiliar with this trend in web and application design, I encourage you to enter “blue light sleep” into your favorite search engine. Also, going “dark” at night saves energy since screen light accounts for a large percentage of power draw on any computing device.

Our design aesthetic (while certainly not “modern”) has long featured natural environmental cues. Night mode provides yet another indication of what is happening in our community. People from other time zones who visit the site (and we get a number of them daily) will now immediately know whether it is night or day here.

Currently, I am working on a user override feature for those who don’t enjoy this style change. I hope to release that enhancement within the next several days.

In the meantime, let me know what you think in the comments below.

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UPDATE 8/11/22 7:45 PM:

Theme options (auto | day | night) now appear at the bottom of each page. The site defaults to “auto” which will enable night mode only at night. But you can choose to override with “day” or “night” mode at any time. A cookie will be saved on your device so you shouldn’t have to continually select your preferred option each time you visit.

UPDATE 9/15/22 7:15 AM:

The site will now enter night mode at nautical sunset and remain dark until nautical sunrise. This will ensure it is actually dark outside when the site is in night mode. For more information on those times in Marquette, see https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/usa/marquette.

UPDATE 9/17/22 3:00 PM:

The nautical sunrise/sunset times are now listed at the bottom of each page.

Posted in Site Updates

A New Interactive Radar Map

February 20, 2021February 20, 2021 at 10:56 AM by John W.

Last December we had to remove the radar imagery that appeared on the home page (for most devices). This was due to the recent overhaul of radar data by the National Weather Service.

Since then I’ve been looking for a replacement radar interface that was free and didn’t track end users.

It turns out that Windy.com, a weather enthusiast site I subscribe to that provides all manner of modeled weather data, offers a ready-made widget that will, among other things, display current and past radar conditions. You’ll find this zoomable radar on our Maps page.

Continue reading “A New Interactive Radar Map”