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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Aug 15, 11:00 -0400
I took your advice and set my page preferences to show both English and metric units on Weather Underground and this is what it shows right now for Paris:
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Temps en région tropicale: Invest 90 (East Pacific)
Conditions actuelles Paris, FR (Aéroport)Mise à jour: 33 min 50 sec ago
59 °F / 15 °CPluie fine
Humidité: 88% Point de rosée: 55 °F / 13 °C Vent: 18 mph / 30 km/h / 8.2 m/s from the Nord ![]()
Pression: 29.98 pouce / 1015 hPa (Régulier) Visibilité: 8000.0 Miles terrestres / 12872.0 Kilomètres Ultraviolet: 4 sur 16 Nuages: Nuages épars 1000 ft / 304 mFew 1700 ft / 518 mGénéralement nuageux 3300 ft / 1005 m(Au-dessus du niveau du sol)Altitude: 358 ft / 109 m
Satellite Webcam WunderMap new! Planificateur de voyage Stations météorologiques Choisissez une source pour vos conditions actuelles:METAR LFPG 151330Z 36016KT 8000 -RA SCT010 FEW017TCU BKN033 15/13 Q1015 NOSIG
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This makes me laugh even more as the person who programed the conversions has made even more funny errors.
We now have the pressure in inches of mercury (the english unit) as well as hectopascals (the metric unit.) which are correct but the next line shows the visibility to be 8000.0 statute miles, 12800 km!
I know, sometimes you can see 92 million SM when the sun is visible (not today, il fait naeugeux), but they never measure 8000 SM visibility.
Look at the actual METAR report at the bottom and you will see the group "8000" which is the measured visibility in meters. The programmer apparently took this to mean 8000 SM.
LOL
And the cloud heights, (nauges) 1000 feet and 304 meters, why not an even 300 meters? And more clouds at 3300 feet, 1005 meters, why not an even 1000 meters?
gl
Marcel Tschudin wrote:Yes, I'm more familiar with metric units but I'm aware that for certain applications, like aviation, the English units are kept being used. I don't know why in aviation they can't use 300m instead of 100ft. May be one fears that a change to metric would create a too high risk. So, if English units are the "decent" ones for you, why then you don't click on the link "Page Preferences" at the top of wunderground's page and adjust the units to be shown to those? Since the METAR are in English units you would see the original data without conversion. BTW, regarding English units: I noticed recently that the department stores here in Istanbul indicate the power of air conditioners in BTU. I guess that only a very, very small part of the population in this country knows what this stands for. Marcel