Hello Everyone,

ThinkServer TS140

First of all, apologies for the radio-silence over the past few weeks. It’s been an extremely busy month with non-stop challenges at every turn. I just wanted to take a moment to fill everyone in with the details of what we are working on and some of the issues we are striving to resolve.

ISP Connectivity Problems and Backup Solutions

Austin’s Atmosphere has been working closely with our local Internet Service Provider to resolve an on-going issue with connectivity. In order to ensure that future service interruptions don’t interrupt our operations we are presently working on setting up a backup DSL line to our regular high speed cable line. This back-up system will allow us to continue working, albeit a little slower than usual, with minimal interruption.

New Server

Austin’s Atmosphere is very excited to report that we have received and are setting up a brand new Lenovo Thinkserver TS140. This new server will give us the ability to store more data, have more redundant backups to critical data, and consolidate all our work in one convenient location. Best of all, the server is highly customizable, meaning that as Austin’s Atmosphere grows our hardware and network solutions will be able to grow dynamically!

New Forecast Products

One of the issues in the past with our weather forecasts has been formatting problems on different devices. Our old template would look good on a desktop display, however, parts of the forecast would not display nicely on mobile devices. It goes without saying that mobile devices comprise a significant portion of our visitors, therefore we are working on developing weather forecast templates that are optimized for both desktop and mobile displays. We will be bringing these new forecast templates to light in the next couple weeks!

In-House WRF Model

It has been a long-time goal for Austin’s Atmosphere to run it’s own in-house weather model using the WRF (Weather Research Forecast) model. This open-source model can be run by any users at home, but it requires significant hardware dedication and has a steep learning curve. With the new server being setup we are hopeful that the WRF will be able to be installed and run regularly. This will allow Austin’s Atmosphere to run high resolution weather forecasts over the Hudson Valley, or any location of our choosing! This idea is still in ‘concept’ mode and we will keep you all apprised with our progress during this project.

Weather Icons

In addition to the new forecast templates we are also working on re-designing the weather icons that we use in those forecasts. We will be rolling out those new graphics after the New Year.

Have a suggestion of your own for us? We’d love to hear how we can improve or what users would like to see in the future here at Austin’s Atmosphere. So feel free to leave a comment below!