It was created to help public safety
personnel get quick info on weather conditions while in their patrol
vehicles. I created it when I worked in dispatch after getting calls
all night about the weather, etc. I do it voluntarily, without
compensation, in fact it costs me money for the site address and
hosting. You're welcome.
Where do you get the radar images from?
The radar images are pulled from various news and weather sites. I don't create any of them myself.
Why don't you update the road conditions more?
I pull the road conditions from the DOT site. They create the images and do the updates.
Why don't you have the time on the images so we know when they are updated?
I don't create the images, just link to them. Some of the radar images have a time stamp on them.
If the time stamp says CDT (Central Daylight Time) or CST (Central Standard Time) it is in local time for Iowa.
If it says GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or UTC (Universal Cordinated Time)
you have to do the math to figure out the local time of the image.
To figure out local time from GMT, Zulu, or UTC subtract 5 hours during
daylight savings time (summer) and 6 hours during non-daylight
savings (winter) for Iowa.
Why are there so many radar images? It seems redundant.
It is redundant on purpose. If I pull from
only one site and they go down or change the location of the images
then it may be days (or weeks or months) before I know about it.
I have another job besides this site so when I'm gone I may not
notice if images/links go down. Multiple sources help make sure
that there is always some time of weather info.
Why is it black and green?
To keep it dark and save the night vision of officers using it at night.
Why don't you add...(insert cool new thing on other sites)
I'm not a web designer so I don't always know how to add all the new
cool things out there. I also want the site to use as little
bandwidth as possible so patrol vehicles using aircards can open the
page as quickly as possible on a somewhat slow connection.
How can I help make the site better?
Go to the
FEEDBACK form and let me know how