> Too bad the storm position data is so hard to get!
I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon looking for an XML feed with the positions. You would think that NOAA would have such a feed, but they don't.
I think you would have to gather the coordinates yourself, maybe based on parsing out the coordinates from the advisories, but that might be too much work to be worth it.
> I think you would have to gather the coordinates yourself, maybe based > on parsing out the coordinates from the advisories, but that might be > too much work to be worth it.
That's why I went with the XML feed from the Florida site I found. I plan to enchance the site, but first I'm going to move it to it's own domain.
But the problem with the hurricane data is that you would have to open each advisory text and find the word LONGITUDE and LATITUDE and KNOTS to get decent data. Then, you'd have to cross your fingers that the forecaster that wrote the advisory didn't make any typos!
I made a slight update to my code today. (Some of you may have seen the results already)
The text in the markers is now generated on the fly via PHP, I use TD, TS, and H to indicate the type of storm at each point. It seems to work fine in Mozilla and Firefox, but MSIE has a problem with the transparency occassionally.
> But the problem with the hurricane data is that you would have to open
> each advisory text and find the word LONGITUDE and LATITUDE and KNOTS
> to get decent data. Then, you'd have to cross your fingers that the
> forecaster that wrote the advisory didn't make any typos!
I wonder what would happen if you put the points down in reverse order. It would make sense to have the most recent position be on top, rather than buried.
I think you have created a very nice example of a good use of Google Maps. I might work on building coordinates sets next week, then we could share the data somehow.
