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View Full Version : postholer mobile weather reports --- updated



BrianLe
08-08-2010, 00:51
I use Postholer.com as my journal site because it works much better on mobile devices --- no pictures or ads or whatever, works well to upload from or view on my smartphone (note that I have no association with postholer other than having submitted some suggestions over the past couple of years and one document that lives on that site now).

I walked the AT this year, and as on the PCT I appreciated the weather reports on the mobile version of postholer, a simple drop-down list of locations on the trail, generally within about 100 miles or less of the last one. Close enough, and easy to use. The result is a text-only weather forecast of the next seven days for the given location. FWIW, you can get more accurate than that if you know a specific latitude and longitude and are willing to enter that, but the drop-down list is very quick and easy to use.

The one drawback I found in using this along the AT this year was that the list of locations was somewhat weird --- several of the listed places I hadn't heard of and weren't listed in my data book.

Thus I submitted a set of suggested changes, and these has been implemented, so now the list is pretty logical (IMO) for an AT thru- or section-hiker.

Even if you don't use postholer as your journaling site, if you have internet access on a mobile device (likely a phone ...), you might give postholer a try for that: http://postholer.com/mobi/wx.php

couscous
08-08-2010, 21:06
See what Weather Underground's Mobile Site (http://i.wund.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?brand=iphone&query=bellevue%2C+wa) looks like on your smart phone. I use it because I can specify whatever town I want.

BrianLe
08-09-2010, 01:13
A person should definitely try out multiple options (if so inclined). For me on the AT this year, I think postholer mobile was better. It's pure, all text --- i.wund.com put some graphics on there and in general seemed slower to load, and at least the first time trying it I had to navigate through more screens to get what I was after. I didn't notice that I could specify "any" town I wanted ... perhaps there's a different approach to this that I missed, but I just specified my home state and got a discrete list of various cities and large towns in the state. The nice thing about the postholer lists is that these are nicely spaced out towns that are right on or reasonably close to the trail.

Postholer formats nicer too, there's no extraneous info (IMO), just a text-only set of terse paragraphs summing up forecasts for the target location for the coming week.

For more general purpose use, I'm sure the weather underground's moile site is a good choice.

leaftye
08-10-2010, 05:07
I used Postholer for weather also, but entered my location with gps coordinates.

postholer.com
08-12-2010, 00:59
I used Postholer for weather also, but entered my location with gps coordinates.

All forecasts are 'Point Forecasts'. These forecasts are generated for your exact location.

The benefit of specifying gps coordinates (WGS84 decimal degrees) will result in a 'custom' forecast.

For example, if you give the coordinates of 11,600 foot Helen Lake on the PCT you'll get relevant high/low temps, et al, forecast for that exact location, not a town many miles away at much lower altitude, where the temps will vary wildly.

Of course, selecting a town from the drop down list will give you any major weather patterns developing which is the primary idea.

A big 'thank you' to Brian for taking the time to make the AT location list more realistic.

-postholer