This started as a post about shovelling snow and skiing, and turned into a rant about the quality of data available on the Web. I wanted to check the amount of snow that fell during the two storms of December 30 – December 31, and January 1 – January 2. The correct answer according to news stories published in the Winnipeg Free Press was 26 cm and 15 cm respectively. They seemed to have a reliable source – perhaps a meteorologist. The Free Press also prints a daily weather feature, and the snowfall information wasn’t there. Not for the last day, or the last week, or the last calendar month. I couldn’t get the information on the Internet either.
The Environment Canada web page for Winnipeg has current conditions and a current forecast. It has a link to “Past Weather” which goes to the National Climate Data Online database. However the database does not list snowfall. A monthly view of the Database for a particular city has a column for snowfall, but the column is blank.
The Weather Network has a snow feature which has national and regional colour slides of accumulated snowfall for the past 7 days, and observations at various points within the last 24 hours, but I couldn’t pull out older data.
And in my searchs I found that there is a Weather Network spoof site that with Hotbar and shopping links. That’s what you get if you enter weathernetwork.com instead of theweathernetwork.com in the address bar or the search bar.