I took the opportunity this weekend to make some significant changes to the way Lawrenceville Weather works. Over the almost four years I have run this site, I’ve added a lot of new features. The problem is that almost no one knew that they were there, since access to them was buried where it couldn’t be found. In addition, with the capability to display national forecasts, it didn’t make sense to have ‘Current Conditions’ always ending up with the forecast for Lawrenceville.

The solution was to make a new two-level menu system that lets you more easily find what you want. Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll find on the top row of menus:

Lawrenceville Weather: This is essentially mirroring the structure of the old site, with the home page, forecast, and the historical data showing up on the second line of the menu. I’ve also added a new Watches and Warnings page — more on that later.

National Weather: The main page here is the old city forecasts page, but you can click on Forecast to bring up a forecast page for any location in the country. It defaults to Atlanta, but you can set your defaults for another city if you wish. Once you’ve decided on your forecast, the second-level menu lets you look at watches, warnings and special weather statements. Finally, I’ve added a new State menu that displays additional climate and weather information relevant to the entire state.

Maps: This area brings all the map related functionality in one place. You can access radar and satellite information, forecast maps, rainfall history, and more.

Tropical Center: This section of the website holds information on tropical storms and hurricanes. You can see storm tracks, outlooks, and storm histories.

Blog and About: Pretty much the same as before.

The two big additions that brought some of this change about are the watches and warnings additions, and the tropical center additions. I’ve added a new watches and warnings map to the map center that lets you drill down into warning areas until you’re looking at the warnings for a specific city. These maps also appear on the forecast pages (by default if there is a warning in the forecast area).

The second addition is the new tropical storm pages. These should provide a lot of detail about active storms, and reference information on previous storms going back to the ’80s.

Bugs: A big change like this is sure to bring problems with it — some things don’t work like they should, menus aren’t always appearing on every page properly, or images don’t display (like they aren’t now in the tropical center). I’ll be working on getting these fixed over the next few days, however if you see a problem, leave a comment to this post.

Right now, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and I’m going outside to enjoy it while it lasts. The cooler weather brought in by yesterday’s rains won’t last too long.

I’ve added a new feature to the site: the ability to monitor precipitation on a statewide basis. You can see the Georgia rainfall map here. The page is available from the Forecast page (right now just for Lawrenceville), although by the weekend, the map will be available from any local forecast page.

The maps show in reasonable detail how precipitation amounts can vary even within a single county. Data is gathered using a combination of radar data and local reporting stations by the National Weather Service, which produces the maps. You can view precipitation over the previous 24 hours, or for longer periods. For the longer periods, you can also see normal precipitation amounts, departure from normal rainfall over the period, and percentage of normal precipitation.

Thanks, and a tip of the hat to the Weather Service, which provides the data and the maps.

You don’t have to look at a map to know that rainfall in Gwinnett is sorely lacking. A trough has been hanging out just to our north, but a ridge centered over north Georgia is keeping the rain away. That ridge is expected to break up in the next day or so, which may mean we will see some rain before the weekend. In addition, it’s possible that an Atlantic tropical system may develop into a storm in the next few days, with a possible path over Cuba and into the Gulf. That could also bring some much needed rainfall to Georgia.

For the month of June, Georgia ranked just below average for rainfall statewide, although in Gwinnett, we were much lower. However, take a look at the map below, and see that much of the Northeast had almost the wettest June since recordkeeping began:

On the temperature side, Georgia saw the 43d coldest average temperature out of 112 years of recordkeeping. June saw almost record warmth in Nevada (111th of 112), Wyoming (110/112) and California (109/112).

The better than 80 degree weather we’re seeing today has broken the previous high temperature record for March 12 of 80 degrees in 1996. With a high so far today of 83, and yesterday’s high of 81, this is the warmest weekend of the year so far, and a great temptation to go outside and do some gardening.

However, the warm weather is unlikely to last. After another warm day on Monday, temperatures will return to their normal highs of around 60, and lows of around 40, at least for the next week or so.

We’re seeing the beginning of the summer pattern change. Massive low pressure systems like the ones we saw for so many weekends this winter are now passing to our north. This weekend, areas along the Illinois-Indiana border are under flood warnings, as a band of rainfall and snow stretches from South Dakota to Maine. The low is drawing warm air from the Gulf into the Old South, with temperatures in the 80s from Texas to Virginia.

Now, we’re more likely to see thundershowers instead of steady rain, more typical of a summer pattern than a winter one.

It has been a busy ten days since I last posted - partially because I was out of town at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and partially because I have been working on some major enhancements to this website. Now, you can get forecasts for any location in the United States. I’ve also added a new radar pages for anywhere in the country, a satellite page, and other features. There are probably still some bugs to be worked out, and still more changes in the coming days. I hope you enjoy them.

In an effort to make the Lawrenceville Weather website more useful, I decided to add some additional maps which provide current weather conditions and a graphical five day forecast. A sample is shown below.

On the Current Conditions page, you can view national maps of temperature, humidity, dewpoint, barometric pressure, heat index, wind chill and more. The Five Day Forecast page shows expected high and low temperatures, and probable precipitation amounts. Finally, you can view yesterday’s high and low temperatures on the US Cities Forecast page.

I hope you find them useful. The company that produces these maps also offers weather radar and maps of watches and warnings that I may add in the future. However, these maps aren’t free, and I don’t really want to pollute this site with lots of banner ads that might help pay for the graphics.

If you find these maps useful, please consider making a donation to help defray their cost. There is a link to the right that will allow you to make a credit card payment through PayPal.

Thanks for your support.

This post isn’t strictly about the weather. Consider it my Christmas card to all of the folks that have kept up with LawrencevilleWeather.com over the last year.

This Christmas lights video is an actual movie of a house in Mason, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. The owner of the home, Carson Williams, began putting up lights in early October. He uses a computer to control 88 circuits that switch the lights on and off in time with the music, which is broadcast over a low-power FM frequency so people can listen to it in their cars without bothering the neighbors. It takes about 3 hours to program one minute of music. The tune is by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

I hope this video brightens your Christmas season.