Times staff
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Weather geeks, get ready.
A new interactive weather site at tampabay.com is about to take live weather reports to the next level.
Launching Sept. 1, it will allow users to see radar and satellite images of everything from hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean to rain clouds right over your house.
In partnership with Weather Underground, one of the most trusted sources of online weather data, tampabay.com's new weather site will include a "WunderMap," which allows users to zoom in on their streets to see if their lawns are getting a good rain, or zoom out to see how a tropical depression is developing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Users will also be able to roll over their region to pull up an exhaustive array of weather information, including an area's humidity percentage, dew point and wind direction. The site also offers hour-by-hour forecasts, removable layers of animated radar images, tornado tracking and tide times for the various coastal areas in the Tampa Bay area.
Tampabay.com's new site will continue to feature the highly advanced Klystron 9 weather radar from Bay News 9, the St. Petersburg Times' TV partner.
The Weather Underground WunderMap was launched in 2008 by company founder Dr. Jeff Masters, one of the country's most renowned hurricane experts. His blog at wunderground.com is one of the most popular sources for online information during hurricane season.
