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Known reason for WeatherData being currently unreliable?

Posted 7 years ago

I am using WeatherData every now and then and found that at some times (like today and yesterday) it is very unreliably, while at other times it works reasonably well. Currently it is really slow and returns Missing["NotAvailable"] or $Failed for almost every request and weather station. At other times I can get the same data (e.g. temperature values for a given date-range and weatherstation) quickly and reliably. My guess is that there might be some problems with the underlying infrastructure, but this of course is just a wild guess. Does anyone know any details or where/how I could find out whether such problems currently exist? I would also appreciate any hints about how I could ensure that the client side setup is not causing any problems and is set up for optimal results (e.g. data-paclet versions and states, timeouts, ... ?)

POSTED BY: Albert Retey
10 Replies

You should always post minimal code reproducing the issue, even if things seem obvious to you. Also please format code properly. It is all in the rules: https://wolfr.am/READ-1ST I can confirm, at least:

In[1]:= WeatherData["Chicago", "Temperature"]
Out[1]= Missing["NotAvailable"]

But W|A seems to work. So probably they get WeatherData from a different source that is acting out currently. You can always use W|A workaround:

enter image description here

data = WolframAlpha["Chicago temperature from 1995 to 2000",  "TimeSeriesData"];
DateListPlot[data, PlotTheme -> "Wide"]

enter image description here

POSTED BY: Sam Carrettie
Posted 7 years ago

I've been finding it increasingly unreliable over the last few weeks, so in a way, glad to see that other people are having the same struggles. I would also appreciate it if the failure came with a note to say that the servers were currently down, so that I don't go searching for a problem at my end.

POSTED BY: Paul Lynch
Posted 7 years ago

You are of course right about the missing code example, I originially didn't think answers would contain code and thus didn't think about providing an example. But showing code of course always clarifies things, actually I am using something like this:

data = WeatherData["EDDM","Temperature",{{2016,1,1},{2016,1,31}}]

that is, I need data from a specific weather station and I need temperatures for a given time period in the resolution that the weather station provides. That's why I would prefer a more specific call syntax like WeatherData (or AirTemperatureData) over the WolframAlpha free form input, but I of course would appreciate a workaround anyway. I tried e.g. this:

WolframAlpha["EDDF temperature from 01/01/2016 to 01/31/2016", "TimeSeriesData"]

or this:

WolframAlpha["weatherstation EDDF temperature from 01/01/2016 to 01/31/2016", "TimeSeriesData"]

but could not get any temperatures for a weatherstation from it. Would you have a suggestion how that could be achieved?

And of course I still would be interested in any information about what the actual problem with WeatherData is and whether I can do anything about it :-)

POSTED BY: Albert Retey
Posted 7 years ago

Thanks Sam, I understand you are trying to help. Looks like my example was not precise enough. The problem is that it isn't that easy to come up with something that WolframAlpha understands for other weatherstations, e.g. WMO68817 is a weatherstation near or in Cape Town. I know I can do something like this to get a nearby city if I have the name of the weatherstation:

 GeoNearest[Entity["City"], WeatherData["WMO68817", "Coordinates"]]

and then I could use that city in a call to WolframAlpha. But that would not guarantee that the data would come from that weatherstation: there are approximately 5 weatherstations which could be near or in Cape Town and any of them would be valid source for that answer. For my purposes it is unfortunately important that I know where exactly the weatherstation is located and I need a general solution which can be automated. Please do not feel like I am demanding a solution for that, I just want to make clear that in my situation a workaround using WolframAlpha unfortunately seems not that straightforward. That is why I would like to get more information if and what I could do to make WeatherData work more reliable or get information why it doesn't work.

POSTED BY: Albert Retey
Posted 7 years ago

it looks like it now does work alright again, after delivering hardly any result for about 24h. I would still like to know anything that I could do about it, including getting information about server problems or a place where to most efficiently report such problems...

POSTED BY: Albert Retey
Posted 7 years ago

current state is that it doesn't work. Seems to be an on and off situation at the moment...

POSTED BY: Albert Retey

Try location where the weather station is:

WolframAlpha["Frankfurt airport temperature from 01/01/2016 to 01/31/2016", "TimeSeriesData"]
POSTED BY: Sam Carrettie

Yes, I agree, I just hope they will fix it. Note this also fails:

AirTemperatureData["EDDM", {{2016, 1, 1}, {2016, 1, 31}}]
POSTED BY: Sam Carrettie

It all seems working now, can you check?

POSTED BY: Sam Carrettie
Posted 7 years ago

yes, seems to work for me right now. Well, lets hope that it will last a bit longer this time. I could live well with occacionally failures when there would be a possibility to get information that servers currently have problems and a note when those problems have been fixed...

Thanks again for trying to help.

POSTED BY: Albert Retey
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