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Silly Idea - Ukraine Weather

Ithikial

Ithikial

FGM 2ND IN COMMAND
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Thinking long term here for future scenario designers. Given the Black Sea Crisis portrayed in CMBS 'starts tomorrow' perhaps a group of us should record from the web the daily weather forecast for the three months of summer. Temp, wind, rain. Probably break it up into regions across the Ukraine such as the Black Sea Coast, east, west and north around Kiev.

I'd need some help as I'll be traveling for half of the time period.

Good idea or has Ithikial finally lost it?
 
Oh I'm a big dummy the links to the data are on that page...

These excel files has the list of all weather stations that are part of the GCOS:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/ois/rbsn-rbcn/rbsn-rbcn-home.htm

From that list you can find the name of the stations in Ukraine. Then you can look them up on this google earth station information list is here:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/documents/googleearth_gsn/gsn_stations_2014.kml

And the data comes in here monthly:
http://www.dwd.de/EN/specialusers/water_management/gsnmc/_node_gsnmc_dataset.html

The data is just a big grid of numbers so I still need to read about the format to see if it has what you want. That will have to be another time. Anyone that wants to get ahead on reading the format the description is here: http://www.dwd.de/EN/specialusers/w...e_txt_download.txt?__blob=publicationFile&v=1
 
Ugh.... even as a data nerd for work I look at this and think ... ugh.

Perhaps it is easier just to rely on some of the major weather websites and do it manually over the coming three months.
 
Okay then. A quieter day in the office and I went a little nuts.

This weather site has tons of weather stations - hour by hour: https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/catalog/Ukraine/
Click on the centre you are after and then in the top right select "Hourly Forecast." It includes data for the current day which is probably the most accurate.

I suggest recording the following cities/centers as it covers all of the country including:
- the Dnieper River quite closely where the current focus of the base game has been
- Kiev
- to the east where the current conflict is occurring
- plus if a Marine module is in the works, Odessa and Crimea is also covered (which I'm guessing will be a focus given a it's the coastline)

Direct links:
Kiev (Capital/North center) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Kyiv/#detail
Chercasy (Center of country) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Chercasy/#detail
Lviv (West/NATO border) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Lviv/#detail
Odessa (South West) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Odesa/#detail
Sevastopol (Crimea) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Sevastopol/#detail
Donetsk (South East) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Donetsk/#detail
Konotop (North East) - https://www.meteoprog.ua/en/meteograms/Konotop/#detail

I've got a workable spreadsheet up and running, let me plug in the first day or so to see if it's working as intended and I'll add it to GoogleDrive so anyone can update, especially while I'm away and drunk!
 
OK that manual approach might well be easier. I spent a little more time and found that the map of weather stations getting data into that system is actually only a handful in the region and guess what there is a dark area around the Dombas region - not a big surprise.

I like your links and idea - I look forward to seeing the spread sheet and I am up for participating.

A couple of thoughts:
The sites have a nice icon for the basic weather situation we should map those to the in game choices. I suggest that your spread sheet allow the recording of the weather condition (clear, overcast, light mist etc as the game uses), the temperature and the precipitation. That way people could set the scenario weather condition directly and the game temperature range base on the actual temperature and make a judgment on the ground conditions based on the precipitation data from the previous hours and days.

Do we want to be recording this for every hour or for four hour or six hour blocks of time?
 
A Canadian Cat said:
OK that manual approach might well be easier. I spent a little more time and found that the map of weather stations getting data into that system is actually only a handful in the region and guess what there is a dark area around the Dombas region - not a big surprise.

I like your links and idea - I look forward to seeing the spread sheet and I am up for participating.

A couple of thoughts:
The sites have a nice icon for the basic weather situation we should map those to the in game choices. I suggest that your spread sheet allow the recording of the weather condition (clear, overcast, light mist etc as the game uses), the temperature and the precipitation. That way people could set the scenario weather condition directly and the game temperature range base on the actual temperature and make a judgment on the ground conditions based on the precipitation data from the previous hours and days.

Do we want to be recording this for every hour or for four hour or six hour blocks of time?
Click to expand...

Way ahead of you. ;) Yeah everything is synced back to what's listed in the editor. Had to do a little guesstimate with the temperatures though as I couldn't find a table explaining temperature cut offs for each CMx2 rating. Don't need every hour but I've listed blocks of three hours, enough for:
- Midnight
- Night (3am)
- Dawn (6am)
- Morning (etc)
- Midday
- Afternoon
- Dusk
- Nightfall
 
Falcon BMS has a way of incorporating real world, and updating weather into it's model bu accessing a GRiB file.... look up zyGRIb - it allows you to download weather data from around the world, and visualise it.
http://www.zygrib.org/
 
Up and running. See if you can edit via this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9CGM38l9HhVQmN2bXR2ckM3WU0/view?usp=sharing

Steps - Simply click on the links for each worksheet/location.
- Record the appropriate hour's data in the correct column. Shaded colums will work themselves out based on the number entered. (We can change rules later if we want).
- Check the icon on the web page and use the data to come up with an overall weather rating. (It's summer, it's usually pretty easy).

Real easy, took me about 10 mins for the first day.
 
Mostly looks good - the date columns are not right. I went to fix them and found I am unable to edit the shared document. I can edit it but I end up with my own copy instead of editing the original.

It looks to me like you are using an excel document instead of a google sheet is that correct? I you convert it to a google sheet I think you should be able to give me (and others) permission to edit the file. If you want to keep it a actual Excel doc then you should be able to shave the folder and then people can use Excel to edit the file. I'm easy either way.

Right now though no one else can edit it as far as I can tell.
 
A Canadian Cat said:
That is not working for me either - no ability to edit the file. I can view it but not edit it.

I like the drop box idea but can we share the folder and then I can just open the file with Excel and edit things like normal.
Click to expand...
Yeah can do, just trying to make it easier for anyone to chip in without needing an invite. Invite sent.
 
A nobel goal. The good news is I can edit the work book now. I tweaked the first sheet use real Excel data values but formatted nearly like you had before. Just to verify that editing was possible - I'll do the others later - or put it back in case you had good reason to set it up that way. When are you going to be away? I just want to make sure I am paying extra attention those days.
 
Updated for another day. I'll improve it like setting views and that soon. I've also included another website which is a touch harder to navigate but can be used if a day is missed.

I'm heading off around 10th of July and won't be back until basically the start of September so others will need to keep a vigil on the back half of the crisis. Once it's running smoothly was thinking of doing a shout out on the main BF forums for helpers.
 
Updated again. @A Canadian Cat - let me know of a day you want to take a crack at filling out the form as a practice run. I think our respective timezones mean I'm looking at it first each day. :p

You'll also notice a 'Suggested Ground Condition' calculation on the right hand side. Still got to tweak it but take a look and suggest any edits to the values or how much one setting should influence something. I'm no meterologist and the weather we get here is either stinking hot or storms with nothing much in between. Morning fog is something special. :p
 
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