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Curating Scientific Links on a Station Page

How to curate outbound scientific links on a personal weather page: NWS, NCEI, and WMO first, not unlabeled blogs or decorative imagery sites.

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A station page that links outward is making a provenance claim: these are the authorities this site trusts. Linking the local National Weather Service office is curation. Linking an unlabeled “cool weather” blog is not. The outbound list on a personal weather page should be short, classified, and recoverable if a URL dies. It is not a blogroll, not a search-engine play, and not a dump of every bookmark the operator likes.

The historical TNET Weather URL /weather-links.php mixed a local lightning pointer, tropical and satellite imagery sites, a model-animation page, and leftover dashboard chrome. That mix is evidence of intent—operators wanted outbound scientific context next to the station—not a list to restore. This article is the editorial rule for what may appear on a station page. The classified directory of resource categories lives at /weatherlinks. Keeping a directory from rotting lives at /weatherlinks.php. A methods bibliography for notebooks is a different document at /weather-notebook.php.

Historical context

Early PWS templates often shipped a “Links” item beside Info and Configuration because the dashboard could not hold every official product the operator used: the local forecast office, a satellite loop, a model chart, a university imagery page. Recovered copy at this URL named government and laboratory resources together with personal and third-party image galleries, including hosts that were already informal in 2005. The scientific remainder is the inclusion test, not the nostalgia of a named GIF.

TNET Weather does not endorse the historical destinations, does not rehost their imagery, and does not treat a personal site as an official warning service.

The inclusion test

Before a URL is allowed next to station observations, it must pass all of the following.

1. A named publisher. NWS, NCEI, WMO, NHC, a national meteorological service, a named university laboratory, or the vendor of the logger you actually run. “A guy in Fountain Valley” is commentary. Commentary may exist elsewhere. It does not sit in the same visual rank as weather.gov.

2. A job the station page needs. Typical jobs: live hazards and the local forecast; climate normals or station history; observing definitions; the tropical product if the audience is in a basin; the software description file for the publisher you use. “Lots of cool sites” is not a job.

3. Recoverability. If the link died tomorrow, could the claim be found again from the publisher’s current office, data, or library page? Official offices survive path changes. Hobby galleries do not. If the only copy of a method is a blog paragraph, the method should not have been offered as station doctrine.

4. Honest labeling. Pattern: publisher, document type, short title, what the reader will get. Example: “NWS — local office: Phoenix forecast and hazards.” Not “click here,” not “beautiful color images,” not a trademarked slogan from a third party.

5. No implied endorsement. A link to NWS is a pointer to the issuing authority. It is not NOAA endorsement of the backyard station. Do not use official logos. Do not wrap the station name in a weather.gov color bar.

If a candidate fails any test, it does not go on the station page. It may belong in a personal notebook, or nowhere.

What usually belongs

Warnings and the local forecast. weather.gov and the forecast office that actually covers the instruments. Hazards are live products. The station page should send the reader there, not cache a warning.

Climate archives. NCEI for normals, official station histories, and archival datasets. A PWS monthly HTML table is not NCEI. Linking NCEI is how you stop visitors from treating your yearly rain as a climate normal.

Observing practice. WMO guides for instruments and methods, when you cite siting or units. The station page needs the definition of the measurement, not a forum paraphrase.

Tropical, if in scope. National Hurricane Center for basins NHC covers. A Navy or laboratory tropical page can be secondary if it is still the publisher’s current public product. A discontinued personal tracker is not a substitute for NHC.

Software documentation. The current official documentation for Weather Display, Cumulus, or whichever program writes the files. That link explains tags and file layout. It does not explain climate.

Networks, as documentation. If the station contributes to a citizen network, link the network’s public description (for example NOAA MADIS material on CWOP) so a visitor knows what the identifier means. Do not use the link as a quality trophy.

That is already enough for a station page. More links usually mean weaker curation.

What usually does not belong

Unlabeled imagery. Satellite and radar loops are official products with valid times and sensors. Hotlinking a pretty loop from a personal gallery teaches the visitor to treat someone else’s snapshot as the station’s sky. Point at NWS radar or the appropriate NOAA satellite page if imagery is in scope. Do not embed a third-party GIF as decoration.

Model animation sites without a named center. A GFS chart is a model forecast, not an observation. If you link a model, name the producing center and the model. An anonymous animation page fails the publisher test.

Peer PWS homepages. Neighboring stations are interesting. They are not authorities for your units, your siting, or your visitor’s safety. A directory hub can classify peer stations if you have an honest reason. The station page’s outbound science list should not be a webring.

Forums. Support forums help operators. They are commentary. They do not define a knot or a warning.

Expired, parked, or advertising domains. A 200 OK from a parked host is not a live scientific resource. That failure mode is why directory maintenance exists. The curation rule is simpler: if you cannot name the publisher today, remove the link today.

Placement on the page

Curation is also layout. Official hazard and forecast links belong above commentary and above peer sites. Mixing NWS with a lightning hobby map in one bullet list is how the hobby map inherits the visual authority of the weather service.

Keep the station page list short enough to review: typically five to twelve links, grouped under two or three headings (Official forecast and hazards, Climate and methods, Station software). The directory hub can be larger because it is a catalog. The station page is not a catalog. It is the bibliography printed next to the instruments.

Do not duplicate the FAQ. If the visitor’s question is “why don’t we match the airport,” that answer lives on /weatherfaq.php and may cite NWS ASOS material. The links page supplies the official URL; it does not rewrite the FAQ.

Practical checklist

  1. Write a scope sentence: this list supports this station’s place, instruments, and audience.
  2. Require a named publisher and a job for every URL.
  3. Prefer office and /data/ paths over campaign landing pages.
  4. Label publisher, type, and what the reader gets.
  5. Put NWS hazards first when the page is used by the public.
  6. Keep model and satellite links named as model or satellite, never as station observations.
  7. Cap the station-page list so it can be reviewed.
  8. Exclude blogs, forums, and webrings from the scientific group.
  9. Remove any link whose publisher you cannot identify this quarter.
  10. Point life-safety users to NWS, not to a cached paragraph.

Modern relevance

Outbound links are part of source identity. A research reader who cannot tell whether a number came from NCEI, a backyard logger, or a blog caption cannot use the page. TNET’s public note on how sources and quality controls are described—without proprietary assembly rules—is data sources, quality controls, and methodology. Labeled evidence families, in plain language, are how the service works.

Start from the station section landing or the weather-station hub if you need the rest of the documentation cluster.

Sources