Historical/Average weather

carl hilinski

April 10, 2023 14:59

None

This is a personal use case to generate weather data for solo, offline sim racing. Sometimes when I generate historical weather for a location (e.g. Spa in Belgium) and put the json data in a viewer, it gives an error. I have to search/replace instances of the word "none' with something else, either 0.0 or null. Does "none" mean 0.0 inches of rain, for example, or does it mean there is no data for this item?

When looking at the average weather dashboard for a month/day. It shows an overall chance of precipitation. Let's say for Monaco on April 12 the chance of precip is 11%. That means that historically, there has been precipitation on April 12 in Monaco 11% of the time, correct? There are also percentages based on a daily period. For example, the May 12 morning in Monaco is listed as 4%. Does that mean that on May 12 in Monaco historically there has been precip 4% of the time? Or does it mean that only on days where there is precip, that precip happened during the morning 4% of the time?

Date Votes

5 comments

Support Agent April 11, 2023 13:38 Official comment

Thank you for your question. We generally don't include the word 'none' in the JSON response. Do you have an example of that? We do include 'null' values for elements in certain situations such as when an element value does not make sense or that value is unavailable (for example if a weather station didn't record a value).

The Average Weather Dashboard calculates precipitation chances as a percentage of historical days or hours. Therefore 11% on April 12th indicates that 11% of historical days included rain. For hourly values, this indicates that 4% of that hour range on that day included rain (including periods with no rain).

We do add a small buffer to the days so that we have additional data to make a better statistical picture. So the values for April 12th will include the last 30 years of April 12th values as well as values for April 11th and April 13th. The weather on nearby days is statistically very similar and adding these additional values provides significantly more data to calculate statistical estimates.

Regards

Visual Crossing Support

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carl hilinski April 12, 2023 11:55

Try this: https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/50.4382,5.9703/1998-08-24?unitGroup=us&include=days&key=XXXXXXXXXXXXX&contentType=json

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Support Agent April 12, 2023 21:23

Hi - i ran that query directly in a browser and the JSON did not have any 'None' entries. There are some 0.0 ones for contribution though. Are those the ones yo use as None ? you might want to check your query string directly in the browser as well.

regards

Visual Crossing Support

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carl hilinski April 13, 2023 00:17

Interesting. When I run it from python, it generates "none" for certain entries.

{'queryCost': 1, 'latitude': 50.4382, 'longitude': 5.9703, 'resolvedAddress': '50.4382,5.9703', 'address': '50.4382,5.9703', 'timezone': 'Europe/Brussels', 'tzoffset': 2.0, 'days': [{'datetime': '1998-08-24', 'datetimeEpoch': 903909600, 'tempmax': 56.9, 'tempmin': 50.2, 'temp': 53.8, 'feelslikemax': 56.9, 'feelslikemin': 50.2, 'feelslike': 53.8, 'dew': 52.4, 'humidity': 95.2, 'precip': 0.196, 'precipprob': 100.0, 'precipcover': 8.33, 'preciptype': ['rain'], 'snow': None, 'snowdepth': None, 'windgust': None, 'windspeed': 28.7, 'winddir': 266.5, 'pressure': 1009.1, 'cloudcover': 96.8, 'visibility': 5.0, 'solarradiation': None, 'solarenergy': None, 'uvindex': None, 'sunrise': '06:37:38', 'sunriseEpoch': 903933458, 'sunset': '20:38:20', 'sunsetEpoch': 903983900, 'moonphase': 0.08, 'conditions': 'Rain, Overcast', 'description': 'Cloudy skies throughout the day with rain.', 'icon': 'rain', 'stations': ['06478099999', '06496099999', '06490099999', '06380099999'], 'source': 'obs'}], 'stations': {'06478099999': {'distance': 43386.0, 'latitude': 50.637, 'longitude': 5.443, 'useCount': 0, 'id': '06478099999', 'name': 'LIEGE, BE', 'quality': 100, 'contribution': 0.0}, '06380099999': {'distance': 54568.0, 'latitude': 50.912, 'longitude': 5.77, 'useCount': 0, 'id': '06380099999', 'name': 'MAASTRICHT, NL', 'quality': 100, 'contribution': 0.0}, '06496099999': {'distance': 15429.0, 'latitude': 50.467, 'longitude': 6.183, 'useCount': 0, 'id': '06496099999', 'name': 'ELSENBORN MIL, BE', 'quality': 93, 'contribution': 0.0}, '06490099999': {'distance': 6297.0, 'latitude': 50.483, 'longitude': 5.917, 'useCount': 0, 'id': '06490099999', 'name': 'SPA LA SAUVENIERE, BE', 'quality': 49, 'contribution': 0.0}}}

When I run the exact same call from the browser "none" is replaced by "null."

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carl hilinski April 13, 2023 00:31

Here's the python if you're interested:

import requests
import json
import datetime
import time
import random

#........................................
VX_key = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
# ........................................

# Track list. Note South is minus, West is minus

Track = [
('SanMarino', '44.3398', '11.7133', '\\weather'),
('Silverstone', '52.0715', '-1.0161', '\\weather'),
('Spa', '50.4382', '5.9703', '\\weather'),
('Suzuka', '34.8411', '136.5356', '\\weather'),
('Bahrain', '26.0303', '50.5135', '\\weather'),
]
#...........................................
#Get track and date and start times and durations

Track_name = input("\nEnter track name: ")

for Race_track in Track:
if Track_name == Race_track[0]:
Track_lat = Race_track[1]
Track_lon = Race_track[2]

race_date=input("Enter race date yyyy-mm-dd: ")

#...........................................
VX_address = "https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/" + (Track_lat) + "," + (Track_lon) + "/" + (race_date) + "?unitGroup=us&include=days&key=" + (VX_key) + "&contentType=json"

print(VX_address)
r = requests.get(VX_address)
data = r.json()
print(data)

#...........................................

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