YR, Our Favorite Weather Widget For Students

As a high school Geography teacher, I was always on the lookout for really good weather websites. One of the sites I always came back to was, www.yr.no

What does the word “yr” mean?

The word “yr” has multiple meanings in Norwegian.
The meteorological meaning is light drizzle.
Other meanings include giddy (as in giddy with joy), dizzy, unbridled and wild.
SOURCE: http://www.yr.no/artikkel/information-about-yr.no-1.2025949

Why yr?

Besides showing the weather for 6.3 million weather stations worldwide, I find yr very accurate. yr also provides some useful features which can be placed in a widget. Unfortunately it is not very clear where the widgets are; hence this post.

But yr is in Norwegian!

Indeed, yr’s default language is Norwegian, but there is an English version site that provides enough information to navigate around the site. The English version also provides some interesting and useful information, and if you find something interesting in Norwegian, Google Chrome allows for translating the pages you are viewing.

How do I get to the widget page?

First you need to find your town. Navigate to http://www.yr.no/ and search for your town.

One of my favorite places in South Africa at the moment is Hogsback, said to be the birthplace of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, so that will be my search.

My search brings me to this page:
http://www.yr.no/place/South_Africa/Eastern_Cape/Hogsback/
Now add data.html to the end of your URL
http://www.yr.no/place/South_Africa/Eastern_Cape/Hogsback/data.html
and you should end up with a page that looks like this:

Four widgets options:

yr provides four weather widgets as follows:

1. Simple text

2. Today/Tomorrow – 180 × 300 px

3. Hour by hour – 850 × 430 px (This is a really wide widget, and unfortunately does not fit on some blogs)

4. Three days – 468 × 280 468 × 280 px

NOTE: Your widget will not show when the visual tab is open. It will only show when you preview or publish your page.

What about sidebar widgets?

Embedding the script of choice into a text widget allows you to place the widgets in the sidebar of your theme. You can see Sue Water’s weather in Perth in the sidebar on this page. Please note that some of the scripts produce a widget that may be too wide for your sidebar area. In this case, you might want to embed those scripts in the footer area, or on a post or page.

Some real-life examples:

How does the Ocean affect the climate of two area on the same latitude? Durban and Port Nolloth are both found at 30°S and at sea level, but have very different climates. Durban’s temperatures are consistently warmer than Port Noloth’s. This is due to the warm Mozambique current flowing South past Durban and the cool Benguela current flowing north past Port Nolloth. These currents act to regulate the temperatures of the places found near them. Note: The warm Mozambique current also ensures that the Eastern part of South Africa has more rainfall than the rest of the country.

 

West Coast Town – Port Nolloth (30°S) Cold Ocean

 

 

 

East Coast City – Durban (30°S) Warm Ocean

 

The effect of clouds

The graphic below shows a distinct rise in temperature at night in a small Norwegian town called Hønefoss. During the day, the earth is heated up by the sun. At night, this heat is lost to the atmosphere. Cloud cover slows down the loss of heat from the earth, and can result in a slight increase in temperature. The hour by hour widget below of Hønefoss allows you to compare current weather conditions to the image above.

More Examples?

The examples above are just two geographic examples of the use of weather widgets.

Do you have similar examples for the subjects you teach? Why not share them in the comments below so we can include them in this post.