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Clear Outside Weather Forecasts for Astronomers


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I'm not one for conspiracy theories BUT.... I've heard mention (in some of the darker corners of the internet) that first light optics (in cohoots with torchwood/nasa/holidaysinthesun.com) are now controling the weather. Far be it for me to cast aspersions but I'd like to point out that they are now selling more solar set-ups than ever. Coincidence?.........you decide ;)  :glasses2:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Please could you disable the clearoutside service?

First off, all it ever seems to show is clouds.  That's terrible.  I know it's not your fault, we live on an island, you can't control the weather, etc.  But really, do you need to constantly remind us how bad the universe is?

Second, it's addictive.  I find myself constantly switching to the clearoutside tab and hitting refresh, in the hope that the weather might change and the clouds might go away.

Disabling the service for everyone will fix these two problems.  Well, it won't actually fix the first one, but it might fix the symptom.  Not the symptom, erm the visualisation of the horrid cloud situation.  And I guess it won't actually fix the second problem either, I'll just keep going out to look up at the sky.  But it'll fix something, right?  Maybe?

Ok, forget disabling the service, could you please just fix the weather instead?  I'm sure you're capable of that, you guys seem pretty good with miracles...

-simon

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Please could you disable the clearoutside service?

First off, all it ever seems to show is clouds.  That's terrible.  I know it's not your fault, we live on an island, you can't control the weather, etc.  But really, do you need to constantly remind us how bad the universe is?

Second, it's addictive.  I find myself constantly switching to the clearoutside tab and hitting refresh, in the hope that the weather might change and the clouds might go away.

Disabling the service for everyone will fix these two problems.  Well, it won't actually fix the first one, but it might fix the symptom.  Not the symptom, erm the visualisation of the horrid cloud situation.  And I guess it won't actually fix the second problem either, I'll just keep going out to look up at the sky.  But it'll fix something, right?  Maybe?

Ok, forget disabling the service, could you please just fix the weather instead?  I'm sure you're capable of that, you guys seem pretty good with miracles...

-simon

We are one step ahead Simon:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/misc/zarkov-cloud-gun.html

:D

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My phone told me it was going to be cloudy all night yesterday.

I checked Clear outside for a second opinion and it said it would be clear until 2am.

I took a chance and was imaging until 2:06 when the cloud rolled in :grin:

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ClearOutside said clear for me last night too.  As I set up in the afternoon it was cloudy and I had to temporarily cover up when a shower passed through - Mrs MikeP thought I was nuts. 

By 9pm it was clear and stayed that way till I gave up at 1:30 when dew defeated me.

Mike

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ClearOutside said clear for me last night too.  As I set up in the afternoon it was cloudy and I had to temporarily cover up when a shower passed through - Mrs MikeP thought I was nuts. 

By 9pm it was clear and stayed that way till I gave up at 1:30 when dew defeated me.

Mike

Lucky you. It indicated at my location it would be clear from 5pm until 2am. By 9 pm the clouds rolled in. I got a 30 minute window of clear sky about 11pm.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi,

The Clear Outside website always seems to give me different information to other weather forecasts, and by that I mean that generally the clear outside forecast seems to be incorrect for where I live? I've checked it on a number of occasions and something just doesn't add up.

Wondering if somebody could help as it may be that I'm just doing something wrong.

As an example, for tonight clear outside is showing midnight as orange with 45% coverage of cloud.

looking at the other two services I use regularly, which are usually quite accurate:

Metcheck.com shows 8% cloud coverage.

Astro Panel shows 0-6% cloud coverage.

I live in Middlestown in Wakefield, (53.65,-1.60) which is what it says at the top of the forecast. Can anybody shed any light on this, its not an isolated incident.

Theres a link to the clear outside forecast and the metcheck forecast for my location below.

http://clearoutside.com/forecast/53.65/-1.6?view=midday

http://www.metcheck.com/HOBBIES/astronomy_forecast.asp?location=WF4&locationID=60836

Thanks.

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I don't normally check peoples forecast reports/observations (good or bad) because it would be a limitless task that changes constantly but in this case, I did notice an issue with the cached cloud data which was stuck from a day or so ago. I found the bug and have now fixed it (something had changed in one of our external data sources as of around 2 days ago). This has refreshed the data for your location, and it now broadly matches the other forecasts, i.e. clear until Midnightish and then clouding up afterwards.

This issue could potentially have affected other people in the past 24 hours or so - apologies if that is the case but the bug is now fixed and the data should be refreshing correctly again.

We already have various monitoring tools in place to look for issues like this, but this particular bug had escaped these monitors so as well as fixing the underlying issue, which is now done I will also look to add some additional monitoring to ensure things like this don't slip through again.

Thank you for mentioning it as this could've taken several more days to have become apparent otherwise :)

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