Yes, actually I wrote “Foreflight” but looking at my archives, it was the Autorouter bot at 0552Z that gave me the fresh TAF.
Maintaining a private wx site is a labour of love – a bit like EuroGA
The data has to be scraped off other sites and usually people use NOAA (also known as ADDS) but that one breaks from time to time so you have to change your code.
sorry for the late reply @Peter. Still here, though not very active right now.
@lionel did you subscribe with /add or retrieve the latest weather with /wx?
Yes, the data source is the NOAA ADDS, which is not being cached anywhere inbetween, so if you get something with /wx it’s from there with the latest version. If you are subscribing the NOAA ADDS is actually being checked regularly.
I don’t know if autorouter use any additional data sources for METARs/TAFs? As far as I know it’s also the NOAA ADDS. I know that for Austria there is actually a bit of a time delay until METARs and TAFs are synchronized from the national database to the NOAA ADDS, with the changes being available some minutes, and more, earlier on the Austrian aviation weather website. While I don’t know the exact technical details of how the data is submitted to NOAA I guess there is also some synchronization job involved. Can’t legally use the local Austrian database for the bot though, so there is always that limitation.
To be exact I’m using those interfaces, in the XML variant for METARs and TAFs:
https://www.aviationweather.gov/dataserver
So far those have been pretty stable, also with the last update according to them being in 2010. Other sources sometimes require some tweeking and I run into issues with the SIGMET quite a bit, and this remains not so great right now.
I think the Autorouter gets its wx data from Eurocontrol via a B2B interface, which has a cost involved.
This interface is also used for validating proposed routes (essential for a route generator) and Eurocontrol have been actively blocking other ways of doing that. It is also essential for Notams in Europe, many of which don’t get distributed to the US (don’t ask me why).
ADLS wrote:
a desert (as MORVAN in France !).
Not only a desert, but the indigenous population looks like this. Yes, we really do wear clogs
I just tried the telegram bot (on the ground) and liked it, especially the instant density altitude.