What We’ve Added to WeatherPower in the Last 2 Days
The last 48 hours have been packed with upgrades behind the scenes and right on the radar. Here’s a quick tour of everything new that just landed on WeatherPower.
1. Live Viewer Dots – Now Truly “Real Time”
Those little glowing dots on the radar that show where people are watching from just got a big upgrade.
- Faster refresh: Viewer dots now expire after about a minute instead of hanging around, so the map feels much more “live.”
- Cleaner view: Old, stale dots don’t clutter the radar anymore – what you see is who’s actually online now.
- Privacy-friendly: Locations are still anonymous and generalized; no names, no account info.
2. Community Photo Submissions (With Real Moderation Tools)
You can now send in your own weather photos straight from WeatherPower – and we can actually manage them properly on our end.
- Photo intake: Share storm structure, hail, cloudscapes, or damage photos when it’s safe.
- Ops dashboard review: Behind the scenes, we now have a dedicated panel to review, approve, or delete submissions quickly.
- Better quality: Only the best, most helpful photos make it into our streams and posts.
3. WeWatch Alerts Are Back (and Smarter)
WeWatches – our custom WeatherPower watch boxes – are officially back on the radar.
- Visible on radar: WeWatch boxes show up just like a watch/warning overlay so you can see focus areas at a glance.
- Richer info: Each WeWatch can now include impact info like population inside the box and hail details pulled from new data sources.
- Unified with warnings: WeWatches now play nicely with regular NWS alerts and our AI warning summaries so nothing gets lost.
4. AI Warning Boxes – Now With Population & Hail Stats
Our AI-generated warning cards have been rebuilt and upgraded.
- Back online: The “AI warning” cards are working again after a full re-wire.
- Population inside the polygon: Warnings can now show an estimate of how many people are in the impacted area.
- Hail details: We’ve added support for hail-related info so we can tell you more than just “severe thunderstorm.”
- Cleaner layout: The cards are easier to skim when things get busy on the radar.
5. New Ops Dashboard for Faster, Cleaner Storm Operations
Most of this you’ll never see directly – but you will feel it when things get active.
- Central control panel: We now manage WeWatches, viewer dots, and photo submissions from a single dashboard.
- Photo delete tools: We can quickly clear out old or test photos so the queue stays clean.
- WeWatch editor: Creating and updating custom boxes is now way faster, which means quicker updates for you.
6. Radar Health & API Status Strip
Data feeds break sometimes. Now we have a simple status strip that keeps us honest.
- Radar status: Shows whether the radar layer is healthy or having issues.
- NWS/API health: Flags if warnings or data sources are slow or failing so we can react quickly.
- Firebase / backend connection: Lets us know if the live features (dots, photos, WeWatches) are connected.
All of this means fewer surprises and faster fixes when something upstream misbehaves.
7. Introducing WeBot (Early Preview)
We’ve started work on WeBot, a WeatherPower chatbot that will live on its own page.
- Alert-aware: WeBot will be able to read warnings, WeWatches, and WeatherPower data.
- Scanner + feed integration: The goal is to mix official alerts, our own systems, and other feeds into one “ask me anything” assistant.
- Still in progress: This is a sneak peek – expect more updates as WeBot grows.
8. Security & Safety Improvements
With more community features comes more responsibility, so we tightened things up under the hood:
- Better rules for live dots: Viewer location data is stored in a very minimal, locked-down way.
- Safer photo handling: Photo submissions are checked and managed in a controlled environment.
- Protected WeWatch tools: Only trusted admin access is allowed for creating and editing WeWatches.
What’s Next?
Over the next few days we’ll be smoothing out any bugs, polishing the new dashboard, and wiring more of these tools into the public experience. As always, if you spot something weird or have an idea, let us know – WeatherPower is growing fast, and you’re a big part of it.
New WeWatch Controls, Smarter Warning Drawer & WeatherPower Accounts
The last couple of days have been all about control, clarity, and identity inside WeatherPower. We’ve upgraded how WeWatches work, how our warning drawer explains a threat, and we’ve started rolling out new account features that tie it all together.
1. New WeWatch Controls in the Ops Dashboard
WeWatches are our custom WeatherPower watch boxes – areas you can draw and track when the normal NWS products don’t tell the whole story. The ops dashboard now gives you way more control over each one.
- Max hail size (inches): Every WeWatch can now store a specific hail value (for example, 1.50″) so the radar drawer can show exactly what kind of hail is on the table.
- Max wind (mph): You can now set an expected max wind speed for the watch area, like 60 mph, instead of just saying “strong winds possible.”
- Population in area: The builder now includes a population field so you can estimate how many people are inside that custom box.
- Issuer tied to your login: When you create a WeWatch, the system now records which admin account issued it, so the radar can show exactly who put that box out.
All of this is handled inside the live ops dashboard: draw your polygon, type your text, set hail, wind, and population, and hit Save WeWatch. The radar does the rest.
2. Warning Drawer Upgrade: Hail, Wind, Population & Issuer
The big glass warning drawer on the radar has been upgraded to show more useful info in plain English. When you click on a WeWatch, you’ll now see:
- Max Hail: Pulled directly from the new WeWatch hail field, formatted nicely (e.g. 1.5 in).
- Max Wind: Shows the top wind value you set in the dashboard (e.g. 60 mph).
- Population in Area: Uses the population value from the dashboard and formats it with commas (like 125,000) so you can instantly see how many people are in the box.
- Issuer: We replaced the old “Source” row with ISSUER. It now shows who actually issued the WeWatch – for example, your WeatherPower admin email or display name.
These changes mean every watch panel tells a more complete story: what the threat is, how strong it could be, how many people are inside, and which forecaster put their name on it.
3. Smarter Back-End Logic (So the Data Actually Shows Up)
Under the hood, we rewired how the warning drawer reads data so it works with both official NWS alerts and our own WeWatch records.
- Better field matching: The drawer now looks at both NWS-style parameters and the top-level properties used by WeWatches for hail, wind, population, and issuer.
- Cleaner formatting: Numbers are auto-formatted with commas and units; missing values fall back to a simple dash so you instantly know what’s been set and what hasn’t.
4. New WeatherPower Account Features
Alongside the WeWatch and warning upgrades, we’ve started rolling out new WeatherPower account features so more of the site can be personalized and locked to trusted users.
- Admin accounts for ops: The ops dashboard requires a WeatherPower admin login, and WeWatches are now tagged with the account that issued them. This keeps internal tools secure and makes it clear who posted what.
- Account-based experiences (rolling out): We’re building out user-facing accounts so you can sign in once and carry your preferences with you – like saved locations, favorite themes, and alert settings.
- Future Pro & Plus features: As account support grows, more advanced tools (like custom alert views, WeWatch notifications, and extra dashboard-style panels) will be tied to your WeatherPower account instead of just your device.
The goal is simple: whether you’re a casual viewer or running ops on a busy storm day, WeatherPower should know who you are, what you’ve issued, and what matters most to you.
What’s Next?
Coming up next, we’ll keep polishing the account system, expand what you can store per WeWatch, and wire even more of our AI tools into the warning drawer. If you spot anything odd with hail, wind, population, or issuer names – or if you’ve got ideas for more account-powered features – we’re all ears.
– The WeatherPower Team
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