Weather
The Weather page displays real-time weather conditions and National Weather Service (NOAA) alerts for each of your registered buildings. It is designed to give safety officers and facility managers early warning of hazardous weather so they can take protective action — including initiating an emergency muster if conditions warrant.
Emergency triggers: Configuring which weather alert severities automatically initiate a muster is done on the Emergency page, not here. The Weather page is for monitoring and situational awareness.
Getting to Weather
From the main navigation, select Weather under the Monitoring section.
Page Overview
Screenshot placeholder: Weather page — Dashboard tab with current conditions and alert banner
When the page loads it immediately fetches:
- Current weather conditions for each registered building from NOAA
- Active weather alerts for those buildings
- A 7-day forecast (when available from the National Weather Service)
Data refreshes automatically every 5 minutes. A Refresh NOAA button is available to force an immediate update at any time.
Alert Banner
If any weather alerts are active for your buildings, a prominent alert banner appears near the top of the page. The banner remains visible on all tabs as long as the alerts are active. Alert severity levels are:
| Severity | Examples |
|---|---|
| Extreme | Tornado Warning, Blizzard Warning, Extreme Cold Warning |
| Severe | Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Ice Storm Warning, Winter Storm Warning |
| Moderate | Winter Storm Watch, Heat Advisory, Wind Chill Watch |
| Minor | Frost Advisory, Wind Advisory, Wind Chill Advisory |
Action required for Extreme or Severe alerts: Review your emergency response plan. Depending on your settings on the Emergency page, a muster may already have been triggered automatically.
Tabs
The Weather page is organised into four tabs.
Dashboard Tab
The Dashboard tab is your primary day-to-day view. It shows:
Current Conditions for the selected building:
- Temperature (°F)
- Feels-like / wind chill temperature
- Conditions description (e.g. "Partly Cloudy", "Heavy Rain")
- Humidity percentage
- Wind speed (mph) and direction
- Wind gusts
- Visibility (miles)
- Dew point
- Barometric pressure (inHg)
- Minutes since the last NOAA update
7-Day Forecast (when available from the National Weather Service):
- Day and night forecast pairs
- High and low temperatures
- Short forecast description
- Weather icon
Note: The forecast uses NOAA's National Weather Service API. Forecast availability depends on whether your building's geographic coordinates are within NOAA coverage. If the forecast is unavailable, a notice is displayed.
Building Data Tab
The Building Data tab shows a detailed data table comparing current conditions side-by-side across all your registered buildings. This is useful when your facility spans multiple buildings that may experience different local conditions.
Columns include temperature, humidity, wind speed, conditions, and how recently the data was updated for each building.
Screenshot placeholder: Building Data tab — comparison table
Weather Cards Tab
The Weather Cards tab shows each building's current conditions as an individual card, giving a compact multi-building overview. Each card displays the building name, temperature, conditions description, wind, and humidity.
This view is particularly useful on large displays used in operations or security centres where staff need a quick glance at all locations simultaneously.
Alert History Tab
The Alert History tab shows a record of weather alerts that have been received for your buildings, including alerts that have since expired.
Each entry shows:
- Alert headline
- Severity badge (Extreme / Severe / Moderate / Minor)
- Building affected
- Event type (e.g. Tornado Warning, Winter Storm Watch)
- Alert expiry time
- Whether the alert automatically triggered a muster (
AutoorManual)
Use this tab to review past weather events, document what alerts were active during a specific incident, or audit whether expected auto-triggers fired correctly.
Selecting a Building
When your facility has multiple buildings, a building selector is available on the Dashboard and Weather Cards tabs.
- Click the building selector dropdown.
- Choose the building you want to view.
- The displayed conditions update immediately.
On the Dashboard tab, the building selector controls which building's detailed conditions and forecast are shown as the primary view.
Refreshing Weather Data
Weather data updates automatically every 5 minutes via a background timer. The page also listens for real-time push updates (WebSocket) and refreshes immediately when the server receives new data from NOAA.
To force an immediate refresh:
- Click the Refresh NOAA button in the top-right of the page header.
- The button shows a loading spinner while it contacts the National Weather Service.
- A success message confirms the data was updated.
If some buildings could not reach NOAA (for example, if the NWS API is temporarily unavailable), a partial refresh warning appears. The page continues to show the most recently cached data for affected buildings.
Stale Data Warning
If weather data for one or more buildings has not updated in over 30 minutes, a yellow warning banner appears at the top of the page:
Weather data is stale. X building(s) haven't updated in over 30 minutes. Refresh Now.
This can happen if:
- The NOAA / National Weather Service API is temporarily unreachable
- The system's scheduled weather polling job encountered an error
- Network connectivity between the system and the NOAA API is disrupted
Click Refresh Now in the warning banner to attempt an immediate update. If the warning persists, contact your system administrator.
During severe weather: Stale data is especially significant if you are monitoring an active weather event. If the data appears frozen during a storm, try a manual refresh and contact your administrator if it fails.
Understanding the Data Source
All weather data comes from the NOAA National Weather Service (weather.gov). The system periodically queries the NWS API using the geographic coordinates of each registered building and stores the results. The "minutes since last update" field on each building's conditions record tells you exactly how old the data is.
NOAA weather data is updated at varying intervals depending on the observation station closest to your building — typically every 15 to 60 minutes for conditions, and every 12 hours for the extended forecast.
Emergency Readiness Integration
The Weather page is integrated with the emergency readiness system. When a weather alert of sufficient severity is received for a building:
- The alert appears in the banner and Alert History tab on this page
- If the severity level is configured for auto-trigger on the Emergency page, an emergency muster is automatically initiated
To review or change the automatic trigger settings for each severity level, navigate to the Emergency page.
For safety officers: Check the Alert History tab after any severe weather event to confirm that expected auto-triggers fired and to document the timeline for your incident report.
Frequently Asked Questions
The weather shown does not match conditions I can see outside — why? NOAA data is sourced from the observation station closest to your building's registered coordinates. If the nearest station is several miles away, local microclimates or rapidly changing conditions may not be reflected immediately. Use the Refresh NOAA button to fetch the latest available reading.
Why is the forecast unavailable? The 7-day forecast requires a separate NOAA API endpoint specific to your geographic grid. If the forecast section shows "unavailable", it may mean the building coordinates are not yet configured for forecast retrieval, or the NWS forecast endpoint is temporarily unreachable.
What does "Auto-Triggered" mean in the Alert History? It means the system automatically initiated an emergency muster in response to that weather alert, based on the severity settings configured on the Emergency page. A "Manual" entry means the alert was received but required a human to decide whether to act on it.
Can I see weather for a building that is not in the list? Only buildings that have been registered in the system with valid geographic coordinates will appear. To add a building, contact your system administrator.
Related Pages
- Analytics — Historical data analysis and trend reporting
- Getting Started — System setup and building registration