Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

Storm chasing

So far we have created a simpler version of what the Nextbus website already does. But we have done it in a way that ultimately gives us complete control over the output. Now we want use this control to go beyond what the Nextbus Google Maps mash-up does. We'll add another real-time data source which is very important to both travellers and bus-line operators: weather.

OpenWeatherMap.org (OWM) provides free, polished weather data for applications. They also have an excellent website for exploring data sets. The following screenshot is a snapshot of the weather over the Thunder Bay area. The area of our Nextbus tracking feed is circled in black:

We use this data to create a real-time weather map for our bus location map. We'll need ...