It’s one of the most frequent questions we’re asked here at Netweather - why the .tv and does this mean you’re going to be making a TV channel?

Well, although you’re not likely to see us on Sky any time soon, we do have plans in place to bring an online video/tv service to Netweather. We’re going to start it small with a selection of items, including highlights of the recent storm chase trip, but will look to expand as we move forward to include forecasts, live broadcasts and other items.

There’s no set date as to when this will start at this time, but it’s not too far off as the technology is there and available to us, we’re just working out the best way to put it into action!

As is often the case, we’re keen to find out from our users as to what they would like to see, so please let us know your thoughts and ideas for this, what would you like to see on Netweather TV?

Feel free to comment on to this blog or contact us direct via this page.

Keep an eye out for further news on all of this over the coming weeks..

As I sit here watching the French get beaten by a very good Holland team, I wonder how England would have coped had they qualified as every other team seems to play far better football than they ever do! The Dutch look good bets to win the tournament, but are they peaking too soon??

I don’t want to write an entire blog about football though, so on to other things. As you may have noticed, it’s been a bit busy here at netweather this week, we’re finally clear of the fun and games of moving servers, so we’re full steam ahead with our development schedule.

In the past week we’ve added new storm forecasts, camping forecasts, motorsport forecasts, fishing forecasts and a weekend and week ahead forecast. (These are all accessible from the forecasts homepage by the way.)

There’s more to come as well, with at least 2 more forecasts on the way over the coming days (as I type Holland have just scored another great goal!), we then have plenty more on the schedule including a brand new homepage and a variety of other features and improvements.

Another thing keeping us busy at the moment is the fact we’re the forecasters for the Royal Show. We’ll be at the show at the start of July, so if you’re going to be there, please do drop in and see us.

Anyway, the football is over and I’m about out of things to say for now - have a great weekend!

Paul

Tomorrow (Wednesday 28th May) will see Netweather migrating over to new, more powerful servers. We’ve simply begun to outgrow the current server setup we have and are moving now to avoid any problems arising because of this.

The migration is due to occur at around 7pm tomorrow, shortly prior to this we will be closing down parts of the site (for example the forum), the switchover should take around an hour, and during this time the entire site will be inaccessible. Once back up, there may also be a few teething troubles, which we will work to resolve as soon as possible - but in the main, once the downtime is over you should be able to access the site as normal.

Sorry for any inconvenience that this causes, we’ll be working hard to ensure that the downtime is kept to as short a period as possible.

Paul

The storm chase of 2008 continues with the team currently in the midst of a very active spell of weather. Yesterday alone they tracked several supercell storms and witnessed 3 tornadoes. The question is though, would you like to join us on one of the tours in 2009?

Coming soon you will have the opportunity to win your place! The final prize draw to decide who will win this amazing prize (which includes return flights to the USA as well as your place on the tour) will take place later this year, beforehand you will have 3 opportunities across 3 different competitions to earn your place in that draw. So, if you do well in all 3 competitions you could end up with your name in the hat three times..

The first competition, which will be launched once the team return home from the final tour on June 1st, will be to guess how many miles the chase vehicle covered across all three of this years tours (April 27th - June 1st). To give you a start, we can tell you that during the first tour (April 27th to May 9th) it drove 3450 miles. Look out for information on how to enter the competition very soon..

For more information on the tours, please visit the 2009 chase info page. Of course, the only way to guarantee your place for next year is to book as early as possible, as places are already filling up quickly - particularly as we currently have an early bird offer in place which will save you £300. All those booking their places prior to the prize draw will automatically have their name entered in to it, so you will have the opportunity to win your place for free and receive a refund for anything you have paid already.

Good luck with the competitions - we look forward to seeing you on the chase tours next year!

While you will be able to follow the very latest exploits from this years chase teams over on the chase 08 forum, I thought I’d also run a blog as it’s my first time out storm chasing and I want to share the experience from a personal perspective.

Between Paul Sherman and myself it’s been a long slog getting this years chases organised, with a heck of a lot of work behind the scenes needed to put them all together, it’s quite a relief now that everything is set and it’s just a case of turning up and doing it.

I’ll be honest and say I’ve never been a huge fan of storms, when I was small I was always pretty scared of them, and that’s kind of stuck, so this trip will be a real eye opener, I’ll either **** my pants or will quickly get over that fear and enjoy what will be some incredibly specatcular storms. Hopefully it’ll be the latter!

One bit of kit we’re taking on the tour this year is a Wifi phone made by Vonage, and what it means is that whenever we’re able to hook up to the internet using a wireless signal, we effectively have a UK based landline available to us. So people can call in without it costing an arm and a leg and we can call out to UK and US based numbers free as well. Based on the amount that usually gets spent on mobile charges on this type of trip (or indeed any trip abroad) it should save a fortune.

As well as the Vonage phone, we’ve got all manner of other gadgets to use on the chase, from basics like GPS to the barons system which uses satellites to display the latest radar imagery and weather data. We also have a mobile internet card to give us ongoing net access on the road - so we should be up to date all the way.

Anyway, that’s it for this entry - please call back regularly during the tour for updates on how things are progressing.

Paul

Even though the last few days have felt more like winter than spring in many parts of the UK, spring is definitely upon us. Gardens are coming back to life, there’s blossom on trees and the grass will need cutting soon, and that means only one thing to a large chunk of the population - HAYFEVER!!

Using daily data from the NPARU (National Pollen and Aerobiology Research Unit) at Worcester university, Netweather is providing a pollen forecast throughout the season. It will be updated every day, with pollen levels for each region of the UK.

You can view the latest pollen forecast by clicking here.

Welcome to the Netweather.tv blog page, from here you will be able to read about the goings on here at Netweather, we’ll also be updating with weather related news and in fact anything else that springs to mind. So call back regularly for updates!