I’ve had a number of people ask how I added the weather facts sections to the bottom of many of our weather site pages.
I’ve created a simple page that has the basic information on how I did it.
Basically, it is a php script that is called by any page that needs to display the information. And a flat text file that contains all the facts that we want to use with a delimiter after each one.
When the function is called, the list is shuffled and one entry is randomly sent to the calling routine.
We use something similar for our new Site news section as well…
Good Information!I for one sure enjoy seeing any form of anyones work that is explained out in detail it sure helps in trying to learn how to make a good, interesting web site.
I had added this to my site sometime back and it has been working well. I put together a list of about 120 different facts pertaining to the weather, weather terms, astronomy, and recycling. In addition my list also has Kentucky weather events as well as local cave facts that are not in this list. Being as it took some time to put the list together, I thought I would share them.
I wanted to add more facts to my collection, so I did a search for this thread hoping that someone had posted some. When I found that there were no facts in this thread, I posted what I had.
Nice list of facts. Doing a quick scan I found a couple of outdated ones. For a severe thunderstorm the hail size criteria is now 1" instead of 3/4" . Also, some of the statistical facts on hurricanes are not correct. A good source for some hurricane facts is on NHC’s website at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NWS-TPC-5.pdf
That’s because I emailed them and let them know of the error
As far as hurricanes goes the following is incorrect
strong>Hurricanes
The average number of hurricanes for the past 20 years has been 10. The largest number of hurricanes was 21 in 1933. Only one hurricane was recorded in 1890. On the average, only two typical storms each year bring hurricane force to the United States coastal areas.:::
If you go to http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NWS-TPC-5.pd you will see on page 13 Table 7 it gives averages for # tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes for various time periods. 10 is to high for the last 20 years from 1987 to 2006. For the largest number of hurricanes in a given year go to table 8a, which shows the max number of hurricanes was 15 in 2005. Not sure where the source of 1 hurricane in 1890 came from. Table 8a has info on min activity. For the last sentence of the fact I believe it is incorrect. You would be better off saying that on average there are 5 hurricanes every 3 years which make landfall somewhere along the U.S. Gulf or Atlantic coast (page 11).
I just deleted the hurricane “fact” in question all together. I agree that it is incorrect.
The Fujita scale has been updated to the Enhanced Fujita scale.
Wind Chill formula is updated.
I should have added a disclaimer to this list. On my site I have this listed as “Fun Facts” - meaning that they are not to be taken too seriously. They were put together from many “facts” lists that were found by Googling and lists from the NWS. Each “fact” was not researched and verified. Please use at your own risk.