SARWeather On-line Help

This page shows a list of forecasts avialable to you in SARWeather. This includes all of your own forecasts and any public forecasts created by others. On the left you have filtering and sorting options, while the main area shows the matching forecasts.

Forecast Cards

Each forecast is shown as a color-coded card, with a summary of the forecast settings and some control icons. Selecting a card (outside the control icons) displays that forecast. Each card shows a small map of the forecast area along with the first frame of the Combined weather plot. However, until the first frame becomes available, an hour-glass icon is overlaid instead.

The header area of each card contains basic information about the forecast. It shows the center location of the forecast area, the size of the forecast, and the forecast resolution. Behind this information is a progress bar, where the shaded area represents the completed part of the forecast.

Finally, the header contains a Time indicator. If the current time is covered by the forecast, a vertical orange bar is shown in the header and will slowly move to the right until it disappears off the right-hand side of the header. When this happens, the bar is replaced by an orange triangle pointing where the bar disappeared to. Similarly, if the bar has not yet entered the header area, then an orange triangle points to where it is approaching from the left.

Card colors tell us how fresh the data is that the forecasts were based on:

• Green: best available data. It is either a very recent forecast or models a past weather event.
• Yellow: reasonably fresh data. It may be worth re-generating.
• Grey: stale data. You should re-generate this forecast for any serious use.
• Red: The forecast failed or was aborted due to insufficient funds. The overlay icon distinguish between the two.

Control icons usualy become visible as you move the mouse pointer over a forecast card. However, on touch-screens they will be visible at all times.

• Request a new forecast similar to this one. The period of the new forecast may be different from the old one.
• Updates the forecast sorting with the location of this forecast. This will show other forecasts in the same area.
• Permanently removes a forecast.

Filtering and Sorting

You can filter this list by pressing one of the filtering buttons:

• Mine will show only forecasts requested by you. This is only available to users logged in to the system.
• Current will show only forecasts which cover the current moment in time.

You can also sort the list by proximity to a particular location and/or time as given by the Latitude, Longitude and Time fields. You can either type these in using most standard lat/lon formats and military time, or use the buttons:

• Updates the location fields with the user's current location. The browser will ask for mermission the first time this is done.
• Updates the time fields with the current time.
• Removes the corresponding entries, either location or time.