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Stations Missing from Current Conditions

Kevin

April 25, 2021 17:24

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I've noticed that for my usual API call of https://weather.visualcrossing.com/VisualCrossingWebServices/rest/services/timeline/Ottawa,CA?unitGroup=metric&key=<KEY>&options=nonulls&include=fcst%2Ccurrent,obs that most of the nearby airports have disappeared and I'm left with these two stations:

EW3670 Ottawa CA : "distance": 1926
KMSS : "distance": 86364

This means that the only source of cloud cover data is coming from a station ~86km away from me which is not the most accurate for my location. I checked a few other locations in Canada and around the world and it seems to be an issue outside the US though I can't say for 100% certainty that this is correct.

Some locations if there is no station reporting cloud cover data it comes from somewhere else since they are too far away to find a station with this data. I did find that the conditions seem to not match using this other data.

This started a few days ago and I haven't seen anyone else post about it so it must not be a known issue.

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6 comments

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  Support Agent April 25, 2021 18:53 Official comment

  Kevin

  Thank you for reporting this and I'm sorry for the inconvenience. We have identified the cause of the problem and the data should now be available. Please let us know if you don't see the data successfully. We have also added cause to our internal testing infrastructure to ensure it does not happen again.

  You qualify for a 'bug finder' reward of free credits for being the first to report this issue. Unfortunately we could not find your account based on the information given. If you email info@visualcrossing.com with your account email or API key, we will credit your account with the free credits.

  Regards

  Visual Crossing Support

   

   

   

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  Kevin May 30, 2021 17:23

  Hello,

  This seems to be happening again. The query above is not returning any stations and forecast data is being used for current conditions with the icon and conditions fields are also returning null for current conditions.

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  Support Agent June 01, 2021 12:50

  Thank you for your message. This was due to one of our data feeds being unavailable for a period of time on Sunday. The issue is now resolved.

  Regards

  Visual Crossing Support

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  Kevin January 07, 2022 18:04

  Hello,

  I am once again seeing the same issue where the only stations available are: ["KMSS","AV502"], with conditions coming from KMSS a distance of 79363m away from me. I'm not sure what the max distance is for searching for stations but that seems a little ridiculous for cloud cover to come from a location very far away from me.

  I also notice that if your only station is a personal weather station the icon and cloud cover values do not match. For example here is Edmonton Alberta:
  
  "currentConditions": {"datetime": "10:35:18","datetimeEpoch": 1641576918,"temp": -26.1,"feelslike": -26.1,"humidity": 82.4,"dew": -28.2,"precip": 0,"snowdepth": 0,"windgust": 0,"windspeed": 0,"pressure": 1006,"cloudcover": 100,"conditions": "Clear","icon": "clear-day","stations": ["F6211"],"sunrise": "08:48:11","sunriseEpoch": 1641570491,"sunset": "16:32:54","sunsetEpoch": 1641598374,"moonphase": 0.14}

  Since cloud cover is 100 shouldn't the conditions and icon be cloudy and not clear?

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  Support Agent January 07, 2022 18:34

  Kevin thank you for your question

  Some of the stations near to Ottawa are not currently reporting weather data. There are currently no known problems with the overall feeds so this may be station or station group specific - such issues are generally out of our control (typically they are due to expected downtime of the station or data feed infrastructure). I have passed this to our data team to investigate. 

  For the second question, personal weather stations very rarely report cloud cover as the instrument to report cloud cover is quite sophisticated. In these cases, we try to use a major weather station to provide the information. In cases such as this where no major stations are available then we currently will use the last forecast values as a proxy for the weather elements that the personal weather stations cannot provide. In this case, it appears there is a problem with the conditions text which we will investigate.

  In both cases, we understand the limitations that relying on major weather stations cause for recent conditions. For this reason, we are currently making significant investment to improving this by incorporating additional remote sources such as radar and satellite information into our data. This will allow us to considerably improve our data in remote locations and also for real time and recent history where official weather observations are not yet available. We expect to start deploying these changes within the next month.

  In the meantime, I have opened a ticket to track the missing Ottawa station data and cloud cover icon inconsistency.

  Regards

  Visual Crossing Support

   

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  Kevin January 07, 2022 19:49

  Hello,

  I did a quick check on windy.com which displays major weather stations and personal weather stations and it seems like the major weather stations in Canada stopped reporting data. There might be an outage with these stations reporting data which is why I'm getting an American station.

  Looking at the data for CYOW (Ottawa Airport) it shows the last update as 1pm EST yesterday.