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NHC Hurricanes smart home integration, free and open source

NHC Hurricanes integration for Gladys Assistant

Tropical storms and hurricanes of the US National Hurricane Center near your home.

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Follow the tropical storms and hurricanes of the National Hurricane Center (NHC, NOAA, United States) from Gladys: the Atlantic basin (with the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf), the Eastern Pacific and the Central Pacific (Hawaii). For each storm: its classification, its Saffir-Simpson category, its sustained wind, its distance from your home, its movement and the coastal watches and warnings of its latest advisory. For each basin: the chance that a new storm forms within 48 hours and 7 days, from the Tropical Weather Outlook. No account, no API key.

This is not an official alert service: in an emergency, follow the instructions of your local authorities and of your national weather service. Not affiliated with NOAA or the National Weather Service.

What you get​

  • One basin device per followed basin: number of active systems, strongest system (in words), its category and sustained wind, and the highest formation chance within 48 hours and 7 days.
  • A Nearest hurricane device: the storm nearest to your home, its category, sustained wind, distance, direction (seen from your home) and movement, with the history of the category, wind and distance. Without any storm, the direction keeps its last value.
  • A dashboard widget listing the active storms, strongest first, each with its advisory and forecast cone, and the formation outlook of each basin.
  • Four scene triggers: a new named storm, a storm within the radius around your home, a category raised (hurricane, major hurricane), and a new coastal watch or warning.
  • A scene action that reads the active storms as one sentence, to send by message or have it read aloud.

Compared with the GDACS integration, which rates the cyclones of the whole world green, orange or red by their humanitarian impact, this one gives the official American detail of the three NHC basins: the Saffir-Simpson category, the advisories, the watches and warnings, and the formation outlook.

Requirements​

  • Gladys Assistant 5.1 or later.
  • Internet access from the Gladys host (the integration reads www.nhc.noaa.gov).
  • For distances and the nearest storm: a location for your house in Gladys (Settings → Houses), or coordinates typed in the configuration.

Configuration​

Install the integration from the store (or Integrations → Install from GitHub, with the address https://github.com/guim31/gladys-nhc), save the configuration, then create the devices in the Discover tab.

Settings​

SettingDefaultMeaning
Home latitude / longitudeemptyLeave both empty to use the location of your house in Gladys. Decimal degrees, west negative.
Basinsall threeOne device per followed basin; the nearest storm is looked for in these basins only.
UnitsImperialImperial (mph, miles) or metric (km/h, km), for the devices and the scenes.
Radius300In miles or kilometres, the unit above, for the trigger "storm within the radius".
Triggers aboutEvery storm of the followed basinsOr only the storms within the radius.
Refresh interval15 minutes10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
Language of the textsFrenchNames of the devices and features (frozen at their creation) and texts sent to scenes.

Units and names​

Changing the units or the language changes the devices: Gladys then offers to update them in the Discover tab. Feature names stay the ones of their creation. Wind speeds are rounded to 5 mph or 5 km/h, like the NHC advisories.

Devices​

Basin device (Hurricanes Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, Central Pacific):

FeatureTypeValues
Active systemscounterstorms the NHC follows in the basin
Strongest systemtext"Hurricane Melissa", or "No active system"
Highest categorycounter 0-5Saffir-Simpson category, 0 below hurricane strength
Highest sustained windspeed (mph or km/h)0 without storm
Formation chance 48 hpercentagehighest chance of the disturbances of the outlook
Formation chance 7 dayspercentagesame, within 7 days

Out of season, the NHC no longer issues its outlook: the formation chances are then not published (rather than a false 0 %).

Nearest hurricane: storm (classification and name), category 0-5, sustained wind, distance (miles or km), direction (degrees, 0 north, 90 east, seen from your home) and movement ("W at 13 mph"). Without any storm, the storm reads "No active system" and the distance is half the circumference of the Earth (12,451 miles or 20,038 km), so that a "below 300 miles" condition stays false. Without a location for your home, this device is not updated.

The devices are refreshed by the integration itself (not by the polling of Gladys).

Dashboard widget​

Hurricanes (NHC): the number of active systems, then the storms of the followed basins, strongest first (8 at most): classification and name, wind and distance, and a badge with the category (red for a major hurricane, orange for a hurricane). Tap a storm to see its position, movement, pressure, the coastal watches and warnings in effect and the links to the public advisory and the forecast cone. Below, one row per basin with the formation chances within 48 hours and 7 days (setting Show the formation outlook to hide it), and a link to the NHC (setting Show the link to the NHC). The widget follows the units of the user who looks at it.

Scene triggers​

All of them can be filtered by basin. "Triggers about" chooses whether the new storm, category and watch triggers speak about every storm of the followed basins or only those within the radius. With the radius, a name, a category or a watch that comes before the storm enters the radius is not reported later: only storm within the radius fires on entry.

  • NHC: new named storm: a system becomes a tropical (or subtropical) storm or a hurricane and gets a name.
  • NHC: storm within the radius: the centre of a storm comes within the radius. It fires again only after the storm has left the radius by more than 10 %.
  • NHC: category raised: filter Change: became a hurricane, became a major hurricane (category 3 or more; it wins when both happen at once), or another category increase.
  • NHC: coastal watch or warning: the latest public advisory of a storm puts a new kind of watch or warning in effect: hurricane, storm surge or tropical storm, watch or warning (filter Watch or warning). The areas are those of the advisory, in English: check that yours is listed. For the official alerts of your county, see the NWS alerts integration.

Variables: storm id, name, classification (code and words), basin, category, sustained wind, distance from home, summary, link to the advisory; plus the change and the previous category, or the kind of watch and its areas.

The storms present at the first start, or when the configuration is saved, fire nothing: they are not news. A restart fires nothing either.

Scene action​

NHC: read the current storms returns text (one sentence: "2 active systems: Hurricane Melissa, category 5, 165 mph, 145 mi SW of home; …", plus the highest formation chance within 7 days), count and max_category. Use them in a message or with text to speech.

Scene examples​

  • When NHC: storm within the radius fires, send summary to the whole family.
  • When NHC: coastal watch or warning fires with Hurricane warning, send the areas by message.
  • Every morning in season, if the highest category of the nearest hurricane is above 0, read the storms aloud.

Data sources, terms and quotas​

  • https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/CurrentStorms.json: the active storms.
  • https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index-at.xml, index-ep.xml, index-cp.xml: the feed of each basin, with the Tropical Weather Outlook and the public advisories.

The data of NOAA's National Hurricane Center are in the public domain. There is no published quota: the integration sends 1 request per cycle plus 1 per followed basin (4 every 15 minutes by default), with a User-Agent that names it. The location of your home is never sent: distances are computed in the integration.

Troubleshooting​

  • "The National Hurricane Center does not answer": the NHC site is unreachable from the Gladys host; the values are kept and the integration tries again at each cycle.
  • No distance, no nearest storm: give your house a location (Settings → Houses) or type coordinates.
  • No formation chance: outside the season (December to May) the NHC does not issue its outlook.
  • Units or names not updated: update the devices in the Discover tab.
  • Logs: docker logs of the integration container; LOG_LEVEL=debug shows each cycle.

Limits​

  • Three basins only: the NHC does not cover the western Pacific (typhoons), the Indian Ocean or the southern hemisphere: see the GDACS integration.
  • Distances are measured to the centre of the storm, not to the edge of its winds.
  • The watches and warnings come from the text of the advisory, read as published; their areas are in English.
  • The NHC updates its advisories every 6 hours (3 hours near the coast): the values are not real time.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings NHC Hurricanes asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Your homesectionNoTropical storms and hurricanes of the US National Hurricane Center: Atlantic, Eastern and Central Pacific. Distances are computed in Gladys from your house (or coordinates), never sent. Save, then create the devices in the Discover tab.
Sources and limitssectionNoData of NOAA's National Hurricane Center (public domain), read without an account. Not an official alert service: follow the instructions of your local authorities. Not affiliated with NOAA.
Home latitudestringNoLeave both coordinates empty to use the location of your house in Gladys.
Home longitudestringNoDecimal degrees, east positive (west is negative).
Basinsmulti_selectNoOne device per followed basin. The nearest storm is looked for in these basins only.
UnitsselectNoWind and distances of the devices and the scenes. Changing it asks to update the devices in the Discover tab.
RadiusselectNoIn miles or kilometres, the unit above. Used by the trigger “storm within the radius”.
Triggers aboutselectNoStorms the triggers new named storm, category raised and coastal watch speak about.
Refresh intervalselectNoThe NHC issues an advisory every 6 hours (3 hours near the coast) and its outlook 4 times a day.
Language of the textsselectNoNames of the devices and features (at their creation) and texts sent to the scenes.

How to install NHC Hurricanes in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: NHC Hurricanes appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-nhc:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-nhc.

NHC Hurricanes requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

NHC Hurricanes is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.

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