'New' Ridge Radar now supported in WeatherHarvest

If you are still interested, I finally got around to "fixing" Weather Harvest to use the revised NOAA Ridge radar site.

Note this is only of interest to users in USA, due to the extent of the US Govt. NOAA radar system. So don't waste your time downloading if you do not need this feature.

The following files need to be replaced or added (all attached):

- wh_radar.php in modules\WeatherHarvest\
- radarjs.php in modules\WeatherHarvest\utils\
- noaa_radar_legend.gif in modules\WeatherHarvest\images (new file)
- weatherharvest.php in language\english\
(Note if you are still on 9.0.6.1 that last file will need to be renamed to lang-english.php and stored in modules\WeatherHarvest\language).

As part of the hack I have also got the Scale NOAA Radar feature in WeatherHarvest Initialization panel working. (Although if you use it, you may want to suppress the City background display, as the names get hard to read if displayed at anything other than 100%.)

Notes on Implementation

Ridge uses multiple background images - called Overlays - to reduce the dynamic content to the radar image alone. This hack downloads all of these on demand, and attempts to cache them semi-permanently in the Weather Harvest cache. The topo image in particular is fairly large, and may delay initial loads.

The overlays consist of Topo terrain, County borders, Rivers, Highways and Cities. These files are listed in wh_radar.php, and you can suppress them by simply deleting (or commenting out) the undesired images.

Looping Radar displays are still available, they now are at 10 minute intervals from NOAA Ridge, which claims to show the last 20 images, but my hack displays all of them - 30 for my local radar - giving almost a 4 hour view back in time (vs. the 1 hour of the old system).

The Long Range Composite formerly offered by WeatherHarvest is not provided by the newer NOAA Ridge system, and so I removed all references to it.

Cautions

It is tricky to align the looping radar images with the backgrounds due to the play buttons, so I had to improvise, and I may be off by +/- a pixel or 2 - in 600.

Scale NOAA Radar works very differently with IE and real browsers. So if keeping the display within a 800 pixel wide screen is important to you, you'll need to decide if you want it set to display the correct size in Firefox and be undersized in IE, or OK in IE and a little oversize in Firefox.

Warnings (tornado, winds, flood, etc.) were never supported in old WeatherHarvest, but I have attempted to show the latest warning (only) in Short display as the top background display. I have no way of adequately testing the Warnings - as the sun is shining today! (Warnings are not available in long display due a naming collision in NOAA Ridge system.)

Caveat Emptor I made this hack for my own use, and am happy to share it, but you use at your own risk. It should work with your local radar feed, but I have only tested with my local one. Back up your old files before overwriting them.