I have been interested in the weather ever since I was a small boy growing up in New York City. My childhood idol was Tex Antoine, the notorious television weather forecaster on channel 2 ( WNBC ). One of my early memories is of Hurricane Hazel which struck New York City in 1954 while our family lived at 634 Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx. A wind gust of 113 mph was recorded in NYC during this tempest in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, a record that may never be approached again. In November 1955, we left New York City and moved to Bergenfield, New Jersey. I can still remember those childhood winter days when the forecast was for snow. Maybe school would be cancelled! Money could be made shoveling driveways! Summers brought the excitement of violent storms with claps of thunder, lightning and drenching sheets of rain. I pestered my parents until they bought me a minimum / maximum thermometer for my 13th birthday. This began a lifetime of recording daily weather observations. I still have fond memories of my first year jotting down daily high and low temperatures and measuring rainfall that accumulated in the rain gage. That first winter...1960 - 1961...didn't let me down. Each winter month here in Bergenfield experienced a major snowstorm, culminating in a storm in early February that deposited 2 feet of snow. I continued weather observing through high school. Years later, my obsession with the weather led me to computer programming. I felt certain that a personal computer was just what I needed to organize my weather data. However, I was unable to find any suitable weather software when I purchased an Apple 2E computer in 1982. I studied basic, pascal and then C as I wrote programs to manipulate my weather records. In recent years the web has provided a forum in which many weather enthusiasts can share their interests. I now have a daily routine in which I visit weather-related web sites maintained by amateurs in New Zealand, Germany, Great Britain, Australia and all over the U.S.A. As time went by, I felt that I had to join this community and began studying web design. This website is the result. Now that I'm retired I've been able to devote even more time to my hobby.
Bergenfield-weather.com was written using Dreamweaver 8. I deployed the first
version on August 24, 2008. Another version was launched on September 8, 2008
after I tightened up the code and improved the navigation system. I also added
an Observer's Notes section. On November 22, 2008, I added a new page displaying
weather conditions along the East Coast from Washington, D.C. to Boston, MA.
using data derived from METAR reports. On December 1, 2008, I added a page of
European weather observations. During the next few weeks I added pages for South
America and Asia. During the last week in May 2009 I re-wrote sections of the
website and used server-side include files to make the code more efficient.
I also added a solar sunspot page.
02.01.2010 The page layouts were re-written
and I added a new radar section. My home page now displays current weather conditions
collected from personal weather stations in the New York City region.
09.01.2010 The page layouts were changed and new images were added.
05.08.2011 Replaced my Vantage Pro with a Vantage Pro2 Plus. This unit has a
solar-powered aspirating fan.
06.01.2011 Added an El Nino and almanac section to the web site. I also used
this opportunity to re-write sections of code. A new navigation system was added and the
page layouts were altered.
12.01.2011 Equal height columns were introduced and a new series of photos was added.
12.21.2012 The site was reorganized and a new section including GFS weather maps was included.
A new series of photos was added.
06.30.2013 I changed from a 3 column to a 2 column layout. A script was added to indicate the
current time in each page banner.
03.22.2014 thru 04.04.2014 - I made a number of additions and revisions. A section to display
YouTube weather videos was incorporated in the site along with an animated GFS map section. An
El-Nino page was re-introduced along with a page of New York City traffic cams in Manhattan.
The current temperature font now turns blue when temperatures fall below 32°F and red when it
rises above 90°F. The basic page layout was modified.
10.30.2014 I re-designed the navigation menu and changed the page layout.
I also wrote some php scripts to access the NWS xml forecast and weather alert rss feeds.
I made major modifications during August 2015. The site's color scheme was re-worked and new
images were added. Data displayed in the N.Y.C. Region Current Weather Conditions window now comes from the
AUTOMATIC PACKET/POSITION REPORTING SYSTEM ( APRS ).
Three new pop-up windows were added... one displays
current weather from Bergenfield High School where weather equipment has been positioned on the roof.
The high school is located about 300ft north of my house. As time goes by, it will be interesting to make
comparisions between the two sites. A pop-up window displaying APRS data in tabular form was added. I also
added a weather blog section.
Two new video pages have been included. One displays streaming N.J. Dept. of Transportation web cams. The
second lets the viewer see live web cam video from along the New Jersey Shore. These should be useful when
following the progress of winter storms as they move up the coast.
Instead of loading complete pages each time the user selects a navigation tab, I now use jquery's ajax function
to load content into a basic page template. This provides for a better user experience... pages no longer
flicker between tab selections.
With this iteration of the website I've switched from Dreamweaver to PhPStorm as my development platform
03.20.2016 I made some more changes and additions. The pop-up window displaying current weather
conditions on the roof of Bergenfield High School was dropped. I had been scraping the data off a Weather Bug
page but their formatting was changed making this technique no longer workable. During the previous few weeks
I added two features... You can now view Bergenfield weather data that has been archived at 10-minute intervals by
accessing the DLY ARCHIVE tab. I also included recent weather observations from NOAA Bouys positioned along the
mid-Atlantic Coast. These data are presented in table and map forms.
The snow cover and sunspot graphics are now both updated using a short php script. Previously, I had to cut and
paste updates.
I wrote a php script that creates a temperature extreme table on the right sidebar. The minimum and maximum
temperatures shown here for the current year and month are updated daily.
07.01.2016 The horizontal navigation bar was re-written along with some other changes. The sidebar was moved from the right-hand side to the left. I now use maps provided by mapbox.com and an API from leafletjs.com to display current weather conditions in the N.Y.C. region. I previous used google map API.
06.01.2019 I decided to try CSS Flexbox and Grid layout techniques on my website. This was much easier than the old CSS
method using floats... why didn't I do this earlier? I also re-wrote most of my php scripts using objects and classes,
something I should have done before.
I had been subscribing to The WeatherUndergound API to access personal weather station data for my site. Unfortunately
they have discontinued this service resulting in a lot of hair-pulling by weather related web developers. I am now
using three data sources... the MesoWest-SynopticLabs API, New Jersey, the Weather and Climate Network and the
Automatic Packet Reporting System ( APRS ).
04.01.2020 Some new features were added and the layout was modified. I now include the NWS hourly weather forecast in both table and graphic forms under the FORECASTS tab.
05.03.2020 I re-wrote a considerable amount of code and changed the site layout. I enjoy coding and now that I'm retired I have too much time on my hands. I also installed a new Vantage Pro2 Plus with a 24-hour fan aspiration shield. It has solar radiation and UV sensors.
03.04.2021 I decided to add a feature which enables the user to switch between Imperial ( American ) and metric units. A new page displays current weather data from Blue Hill, MA.
01.02.2023 Some minor changes were made.
09.02.2023 I had to drop my Visitors Page. Hostmonster has depreciated its AWSTATS technology and I can't use it to access my site visitor statistics. I'm going to have to find a new way to get these stats. I have also added a new page that displays current weather conditions from the weather station atop Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
09.15.2023 Moved sidebar to the right of page. Added a 'Play Some Music' button to give users access to my song of the month.