Cloudeight Site Pick – How’s your weather?

How many of you have heard of Weather.com? How many of you have heard of Accuweather? And intellicast…not many? Weather Underground? No one? Really?

Well let me tell you, if you’re a spelunker you’ll love Weather Underground. Do you know the temperature twenty feet beneath your feet? Do you want to? No? Really? You don’t have an inquiring mind? How about the temperature of Carlsbad Caverns? You don’t care? How about the great Sabertooth Caves in Willisville, Alaska? No? OK we’ll pick another site of the week next week. Sorry about this one.

No! No! No! I’m not sorry about this one. Despite its bizarre name, Weather Underground has nothing to do with weather underground. It’s all about weather above ground. How come underground is one word and above ground is two? Oh because under ground is two words. Yes it is. OK. How come good morning is two words but goodnight is one word? You want to argue about that? I didn’t think so. And if you think underground is two words you don’t know the great underground railway or the underground network of weirdoes that EB cavorts with.

But alas, I have been brutally punished (by EB) for my rambling and yammering – and for talking to much. I’m still putting antibiotic ointment on my stripes. I’m typing this standing up, so bear with me. I might be healed up enough by next week to sit down.

if you’re wondering why I’m rattling on about nothing, it’s to perk you up, to energize your tired tips and tricks eyes. I ramble to put a smile on your face and a song in your heart. Because that’s just the kind of guy I am. You wonder how I ended up working with a tyrant and hard-driving woman like EB? Me too! I’ve been wondering that for about 10 years now. Every night I have to rehash the horrible punishments she metes out when my performance slags and my work ethic leaves much to be desired.

My work ethic is fine, thank you. I’ll show you. Right now!

Most weather sites have so many ads, floating ads, blinking ads. zooming ads, talking ads, and booming ads, you can’t find the darn weather. You have to wait about 15 minutes for page to load 624 advertisements and then type in your zip code or location and wait while the site spools up 126 more ads geared to your locale and all the “tracking cookies” (kidding!) loaded up in your temporary internet files folder. Then after your eyes have been insulted by over 800 advertisements, the weather is 15 minutes older – and if you live in the Great Lakes area, 15 minutes could make the difference between life and life in misery (some say we have no life at all anyway) or death by freezing or being beaten to death by hailstones as large as cantaloupes.

But lucky for you, and for me, and for all of us who have to worry about blizzards, snow storms which roil up from the lakes, and hail stones as large as small cattle, Weather Underground has a reasonable amount of ads – maybe 3 or 4 or 5 – and that’s fine. I’ve never seen a floater or a talker there – but hat doesn’t mean anything. I don’t bother with the weather from May 15 through October 15 – I can spot thunderstorms well – I’m an official Dick Goddard Thunderstorm & Woolybear Watcher. How old is that guy anyway. I’m old and he was on TV when I was in grade school. Talk about longevity…

Anyway…

I’d bring in the developers of Weather Underground but they’re all hiding in hidden caves in Tibet learning to be underground monks. No. I’m making that up. They’re right here, ready to deliver some sanity to this article. The folks at Weather Underground, are coming up from underground right now to speak to you. May we have your attention please. Here they are, the underground developers of Weather Underground:

“Weather Underground is committed to delivering the most reliable, accurate weather information possible. Our state-of-the-art technology monitors conditions and forecasts for locations across the world, so you’ll always find the weather information that you need.

In addition to providing free, real-time online weather information to millions of Web users around the world, Weather Underground is pleased to offer a variety of Newspaper Weather Services and Custom Site Weather Packages.”

Seriously now, Weather Underground has a lot of things a lot of the other weather sites don’t have – or at least things that you can actually find without navigating a minefield of ads and buy-me-now links. Weather Underground has beautiful weather-related photos in their photo galleries, and many smaller cities are represented with accurate local weather information reported by individuals in those smaller cities. While Weather.com and Accuweather appear to have weather for smaller cities, most of those weather conditions are conditions from nearby larger cities — I’m just sayin’. I think Weather Underground has become my favorite weather site because of its simplicity, ease-of-use and the detailed weather information it offers. I’m kind of a nut about the weather – when I was a kid I wanted to be a weatherman.

So there you go: simple, plain, and straightforward. You wish you could get that kind of brevity from me, don’t you? OK for you! I will be brief. Would you like weather that is not buried under piles of moldering, flashing, bouncing, talking, screeching, floating, flying, blinking ads? Yes? Cool! Weather Underground is your kind of place. You can find it at, where else? http://weatherunderground.com .

Ta Ta!