While pondering existence at work today, wondering if this guy doing a presentation in the room was just going to put a huge number of text bullet points in powerpoint while slowly reading verbatim in a monotone voice all day, I saw that @TheAlmightySnark did something neat with his nice watch. Here it is:
Now we have the @dicebot, which was well used by @wheelsup_cavu to the extent that most of the die are now round pebbles, so I thought I’d add (drum roll)
METAR bot (and his sidekick TAF bot
). All say hello to @wxbot! (quiet and disorganized awkward reply: ‘hello’).
To use them just ask the weather at a ICAO location. Like this text in a chat or post (use square brackets for real):
(METAR CYVR)
Which (hopefully) goes and finds out and says this:
@fearlessfrog METAR raw report: CYVR 272200Z 13008KT 15SM -RA FEW008 FEW030 SCT055 BKN065 OVC078 12/10 A2981 RMK CF1SC1SC2SC3AC1 VIS N 12SM SLP096.
You can also use TAF for weather forecasts too.
To parse the METAR format (something I was learning myself anyway) you can use this:
https://www.vatsim.net/pilot-resource-centre/general-lessons/interpreting-metars-and-tafs
So one important question is ‘Why? This isn’t really that useful. Why on earth add it here, it doesn’t really do anything useful?’
That is an excellent question. Thanks for asking.