pyRadar - Open Source Weather Radar For Your Desktop
DISCLAIMER:

pyRadar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Furthermore, pyRadar is for entertainment purposes only. Do not use it for forecasting or emergency planning purposes. Misuse of this software could result in personal injury or loss.
pyRadar News
August 22, 2005 - pyRadar v0.4 is available for download in the downloads section. v0.4 is updated to use NOAA's ftp server, for file downloads. This is instead of the old method of scraping NOAA's website for the files that no longer works due to changes on NOAA's web site. In addition to the new data source, duplicate radar images should no longer be added to the loop if there is not an update to the radar image during pyRadar's update cycle. Also, any new radar images that would normally be missed due to a long update cycle on the client side or an update of < 5 min. on the server side will now be included in the normal update. This will insure that the loop contains the 10 latest images published by NOAA.
August 8, 2005 - pyRadar v0.3.1 is available for download in the downloads section. This release is a bugfix for v0.3 and corrects an issue with adding frames to the loop.
August 2, 2005 - pyRadar v0.3 is available for download in the downloads section. New features include the automatic loading of the last 10 radar images into the loop as soon as the loop is loaded and both the increase in the number of looped frames (from 4 to 10) and a reduction in the time between looped frames (5 seconds to 1 second).
July 26, 2005 - I have tweaked the pyRadar homepage and created a new pyRadar logo. As I am sure that some of you can tell I am not much of an artist. Feel free to submit any logo ideas to pyradar att gmail dott com and I will consider using it as the official pyRadar logo.

I also corrected some problems with the page so that it validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This may cause the page to render strangely in Internet Explorer. If you are experiencing any problems viewing the page, I recommend (and have used exclusively as my main browser) Mozilla Firefox.

July 25, 2005 - pyRadar v0.2 is available for download in the downloads section. New features include the ability to have custom station lists on a per user basis, and a -bc version for anyone who has trouble running the standard release, due to older Python or pyGTK+ versions. (Most of the code for the -bc version thanks to Steve M)

I would like to thank everyone who helped me test the -bc version.
About pyRadar
pyRadar is a Python/pyGTK program that retrieves and displays radar images from NOAA's NEXRAD radar stations, that are located around the United States and its territories (NOAA's radar images as well as various other weather products are released into the public domain on behalf of the American public, making them an excellent choice for inclusion in open source software). Originally written to fill a void I felt existed on Linux (I could not find a radar display program that I liked), I am working on testing pyRadar on Windows thanks to the portability of Python and pyGTK. I plan to release a binary Windows version of pyRadar, built with with py2exe, once I am satisfied with pyRadar's ability to run well and reliably on Windows.

I plan to continue to build on pyRadar by:
  • Fixing the looping of radar images (the current implementation is flaky and not done as well as it could be)
  • Adding the ability to save radar images and loops to disk
  • Adding the ability to watch multiple radar stations at once (possibly)
Hopefully pyRadar will be the first in a series of weather related applications written in Python and released under the GNU GPL.
pyRadar Support
I will be glad to try and answer any questions you may have about pyRadar. The best way to get support is through the pyRadar help forum , also you can email me directly at:

pyRadar att gmail dott com

If I do not respond to your question right away, please do not feel like I am ignoring you. I have a full-time job and am a full-time student, so it may be a day or two before my life settles down enough that I can take the time to answer your question.

If you have found a bug in pyRadar, please report it using the bug tracker on the Sourceforge project page. When reporting a bug, please be as accurate as possible when describing the nature of the bug. Please include in the bug, the versions of: Python, pyGTK+, and GTK+ you are using along with your report.

If you have a feature or idea that you would like to see implemented in a future version of pyRadar, please feel free to leave a comment with the feature request tracker , or email me at the address above.
pyRadar Screenshots
Base Reflectivity (short range) screenshot - Base Reflectivity (Short Range)

Rainfall (1 hour total) screenshot - Rainfall (1 Hour Total)
pyRadar Downloads
pyRadar is available for download via Sourceforge. (Thus the following links are to mirror pages, so "right click -> save target as" will not let you download the file - sorry).

The current version is 0.4:

If you cannot run the current version due to Python or pyGTK version numbers please use 0.4-bc:

The older versions are available at: To keep up to date on the latest pyRadar releases please subscribe to the pyRadar-Announce list. To subscribe please visit the list subscribe/unsubscribe/preferences page.

If you find pyRadar usefull and would like to support its developement, please feel free to click the "Support This Project" button on this page or on our Sourceforge project page. Any donations would be greatly appreciated. 100% of any money that you donate will be put towards supporting the developers of pyRadar as they contiually improve and support pyRadar (less the 5% Sourceforge.net service fee and any fees imposed by PayPal).

Contact pyRadar's Developer
Feel free to contact me with any comments, questions, or concerns at:

pyRadar att gmail dott com