The world as frankps sees it!
Posts tagged Weather
yr.no for the iPhone released
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Yet another Norwegian iPhone application has been released, and also this one is a must-have tool for us Norwegians. I have often found iPhone’s included weather application to not be to accurate for places in Europe, especially in Norway.
I first reported about yr.no for iPhone a week ago. The application is developed in a cooperation between the software house apps AS, NRK and Meteorologisk institutt, and it will replace nWeather, developed by the same software house.
Installation
For the first time I noticed that searching for an application on iTunes Music Store did not work, so I had to navigate to the Weather section to find the application. I guess that is something Apple will soon fix, but for now, here is the direct link to the application: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300709016&mt=8 .
The installation itself was straight forward, but others have reported that they had to reboot their iPhone before the program was available in the menu.
Features
The Yr.no for the iPhone is very well developed is in my opinion. The application has in good Yr-tradition the Search field centrally located on the top of the application window. In addition, you will have the opportunity to use the built-in GPS to find the forecast for the place you are on, view the four last visited places on the front (with a 3-days forecast for weather and temperature) and get a notification for 11 thousand places in Norway and the world. nWeather only had 2 147 Norwegian places (cities, towns and villages).
Sadly, the town that my grandmother lives in, Mindszent, is not one of them. Budapest and Szeged on the other hand are included. On the second screenshot you see a more detailed view of your place of interest. The three days included in the forecast forecast are devided in four: Night, morning, afternoon and evening)
If you rotate the phone you will get an even more detailed 48 hours forecast:
Extreme Weather – Heavy Rainfall!
1The summer has been particularly bad this year in the south of Norway, with lots of rain through out June, July and August.
Last weekend I was invited up to Hein (a colleague of mine), we were to have the traditional summer party. It all started really nice on Friday, as the sun was just about to come through the clouds in Oslo as we were leaving work. The weather got better and better as we were approaching the farm up between Hov and Dokka, and in the evening we were all sitting outside the house enjoying the sun.
Some time during the night a heavy rainfall started, and it rained through more or less the whole of Saturday and Sunday. Some places in that area got up to 150 mm of rain within 24 hours! Despite the rain on Saturday, we were out playing with a catapult and grilled a whole wild pork. Yummy.
The Sunday started with a heavy breakfast, consisting of potatoes, ham and eggs. Great food for the task that was ahead of us, getting out and rescue roads up to Hein’s farm. On the picture, you can see Hein and me in action. Originally we had planned to leave back to Oslo on Sunday eve, but as the main roads and roads down from the fram were all blocked or closed, we had to stay another day. It was also raining a bit on Monday, but not enough to keep us inside. We managed, with the help of a good neighbor, to repair one of two damaged forrest roads, and late on Monday eve we could finally head home to Oslo.
We all enjoyed the weekend a lot, 12 people on a farm is always fun. But thoughts go to the families in the area that lost or got their homes damaged this weekend (Pictures from VG, the local newspaper Hadeland: Set 1, Set 2 and Set 3). Today we experienced extreme rain again, but I hope that this area escaped it this time.
Some beautiful days in Mindszent
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After the extreme heat we have gotten some beautiful days, with in between 30-35 degrees. I know, I know, normally I would have complained a lot, but after a week with temperatures above 40 degrees, this feels quite nice.
I have more or less spent every afternoon of my holidays on the beautiful, renewed beach in Mindszent. During the worst heat, more then a 1.000 people found their way here, but after the temperature went down again to acceptable, there have been in between 50-100 people.
In the evenings, I enjoyed a limonade or a beer at one of the two pubs down at the beach. I get about ten beers for the price of one in Oslo, so I cannot complain. Not that I drank that many … And of course, I don’t miss Ringnes.
Heat Records in Hungary
1Just as most Norwegians are getting fed up by all the rain they have been getting this summer, most Hungarians have gotten enough of the extreme summer weather. The last couple of days all previous heat records have been broken, and since yesterday the new official temperature record is 41,9 C. The new record from Kiskunhalas is 0,2 degrees higher then the old record from Békéscsabá, measured in 2000. Temperatures have been measured daily in Hungary since 1871, so yesterday was the hottest day in 136 years!
The picture is taken from the region newspaper Délvilág, for the area my mom comes from.
Some of my friends are starting to work 03 – 04 in the morning, so that they can be done by early afternoon, and escape to the beach. For those who can’t start earlier at work and that work outside, they are only allowed to work an hour at a time, followed by a 30 minutes break. In all major cities free water is handed out on more or less every street corner. Hungary’s chief medical officer, Ferenc Falus, has issued a level-three alert for the subsequent four days. The government is following the situation closely and are considering making all swimming facilities free and banning all use of private cars cause of extreme levels of ozone.
Washing cars and watering your garden are forbidden, and fines are set to 50.000 HUF. Funnily enough the new trams in Budapest have no air condition, but most of the new buses had! I write had, because they all broke down in the extreme heat. Temperatures in buses have been measured from 43 to 50 degrees. People walking around in Budapest are mainly tourists under umbrellas. Also MAV, the Hungarian National Railways, reports problems as the rails hit 60 degrees and more. In some areas the trains are going at a speed of 5 km/h! All Intercity trains are running with reduced speed, and travelers can for now buy the seat reservations to a reduced cost.
A 200 extra ambulances have been put in to service, and hospitals are filled up with people with heart problems and kids are being born on a double rate of normal. This has led to people being sent home from hospital earlier then usual, and several operations have been rescheduled as doctors in many cases have considered them to be to dangerous. Update Sunday: Slágerradio is reporting that in between 50-60 elderly people with heart problems are dying daily in hospitals across the country.
This is the extreme weather warnings that The Network of European Meteorological Services has issued on their website for alerting Europe for extreme weather (meteoalarm). The heat wave that has lasted 4-5 days is caused by warm winds from Sahara, Africa, and has been forecasted to last till Wednesday next week.
People are advised to not be out in direct sun, as the UV level is measured to 8-9 on a scale that goes to 10. 15 minutes out in direct sun equals a day with normal sunshine. Since most people try to stay inside, the use of electricity has gone up with 30 % cause of the use air condition systems in apartments mainly in the cities.
Why hasn’t any Norwegian newspaper been writing about this extreme weather? Well, they hardly ever write about happens in Eastern Europe, so I am not surprised!