This is a simple rewrite of code found on Lakeswell, the amazing lake wave and wind visualization site. For surfers, the far-away view provided by lakeswell is sometimes a little hard to read, so I just downloaded the maps that NOAA creates for individual lakes. As a Torontonian, I mostly use the Lake Ontario tab, but the other ones work also.
The site works by periodically downloading all the images from the NOAA GLCFS website, scraping the data with a very simple javascript algorithm stolen from lakeswell. I’d like to use a more sophisticated API but haven’t found one yet; if you know more about how GLCFS works, then please let me know.
At some point I’d like to use this project as a practice project for learning React and maybe roll it out as a phone app as well. However, I’d have to learn a lot to do that, so it may be a long time before that happens.
The git repo was a bit of a mess, and I have been deploying by hand, so if you find any missing dependencies or other errors please let me know!
This site collects wind and wave forecast images from NOAA’s incredible forecasting system, and displays them side by side. I mostly use it to help me decide when to surf, and sometimes when to paddle. scroll through images by grabbing the slider handle and pulling. You should also be able to use arrows to navigate between images, but for whatever reason that doesn’t always seem to work.
Click on an image to have it pop up in a slightly larger version in a lightbox. This can be convenient if you’re trying to inspect, say, the wave-height curve shape near a piece of shore line you want to surf on.
There are lots that need to be done. Please file an issue or just improve the code if you have a suggestion.