What's New

Regional Map: Stale Stations Now Flagged

• Fix A station that stops reporting kept showing its last real reading forever, with no way to tell it was old — the Road Conditions page already drops a sensor after 6 hours of silence, but the Regional map had no such check. A station bubble now greys out and shows how old the reading is once it passes 3 hours — the value stays visible (better than hiding it), just clearly marked as not current.

Fixed Blank Page on Direct Links

• Fix Regional/Road/Lake/Wind could look completely blank for nearly a second when opened via a direct link (e.g. from howmuchprecip.com) — the fast-path that skips the home page's fade-out only skipped that one animation, not the destination page's own fade-in, so there was a real gap where neither page was actually visible. Both fades are now skipped together on a direct link, so the destination page appears immediately.

Seasonal Outlook: Fixed Dead-End Link

• Fix The Seasonal Outlook link went to an index page, not a map — CPC's landing page for this product is a table of data-archive links, several of which lead to a probability chart rather than the actual outlook map. Weather Nerds now embeds the current 3-month temperature & precipitation outlook map directly, the same way the 30-Day outlook above it already does.

Statewide Map: Fixed False Dry Holes

• Fix The Statewide Yesterday precip map could understate a real storm's footprint — a cluster of volunteer reporting stations occasionally carries forward a stale “0.00″” instead of reporting missing, even when nearby official stations clearly show real rain. That punched a false dry hole into the interpolated map right in the middle of an actual wet area. A station reading exactly zero while tightly surrounded by meaningfully wet neighbors is now dropped from the map instead of rendered as a false gap.

Regional & Road Map Zoom Fix

• Fix Regional map couldn't be zoomed or panned on desktop at all — drag/scroll-zoom were only ever turned on for mobile, so on a desktop browser the map behaved like a fixed image with no way to zoom in on closely-clustered stations. It's now interactive on desktop too (click or scroll once to enable, so an embedded map doesn't hijack your page scroll), and the +/- zoom buttons now always show.
• Fix Road map's scroll-to-zoom needed an extra click first — the map only armed itself on a click/tap, not on a mouse scroll, so scrolling straight over the map (the most natural desktop zoom gesture) silently did nothing on the first try. A one-time on-map hint now shows what to do.

Road Map Fix

• Fix A few Road-page stations looked broken in summer even with good data — a handful of RWIS sites don't have an air-temperature sensor, only a pavement sensor. The summer map view only ever checked for air temp, so those markers showed a bare “––” even though the station was reporting fine — clicking in showed a real reading, which didn't match what the map implied. The map now falls back to the pavement reading when a station has no air-temp sensor, matching what the popup already showed.

Allergy Forecast

• New Allergy Forecast page — today's grass, tree and weed pollen levels (0–5 Universal Pollen Index), the specific plants driving each number, and a 5-day outlook per allergen. No map here — unlike weather or air quality, there is no dense network of physical pollen-counting stations to interpolate between, so a map would fake a precision the data doesn't have. A new Pollen mini-card also sits on the home page next to Air Quality.
• Fix NOAA Weather Radio map could be dragged and zoomed, and ran full-width on wide screens — it's meant as a static reference of station locations. Scroll-wheel zoom was the only interaction actually disabled; dragging, double-click zoom, and the zoom buttons still worked, and the map stretched edge-to-edge on desktop instead of staying a compact card. Both fixed on all four sites.

Statewide Map Fix

• Fix Statewide Yesterday map could zoom in too tight, or land at an inconsistent zoom, on mobile — the map's initial view is now fit after the page finishes laying out the box, at a fractional zoom instead of Leaflet's default whole-level snapping, and is locked to Minnesota so it can't be panned or zoomed away from it.

Sky Watch

• New Sky Watch card — sits beside Sky Now: the next meteor shower and its peak date, the next lunar and solar eclipse (with Rochester-specific visibility, not just a global date), the next close planetary conjunction, and when Orion returns to the evening sky. All computed live in the browser via a vendored astronomy library — no API, no key, no maintenance — plus a link to the NWS hourly sky-cover forecast for planning a clear night.

Threshold Days & Streaks

• New Threshold days & streaks — a new box on Weather Nerds shows this year's count of days ≥90°F, ice days (high never breaks freezing), and days ≤0°F for Rochester, each compared against the 30-year average through the same date, plus the current dry/wet streak vs. the all-time station record.

Freeze Dates, Growing Season & Percent of Normal

• New Freeze dates & growing season — a new box on Weather Nerds shows this year's last spring freeze and first fall freeze (once it happens) for Rochester, plus the growing season length so far, each compared against the 30-year average for the same station.
• New Season snowfall total — the Month & Year to Date box on Weather Nerds now shows Rochester's running snowfall total for the season (since Jul 1), compared against the 1991-2020 climate normal for the same date.
• Improve Percent of normal on precipitation — the Month & Year to Date box now shows precipitation and snowfall as a percent of normal alongside the inch departure, e.g. "21% of normal".

Aircraft Page Fixed

• Fix Live plane data restored — the three community ADS-B feeds behind the Aircraft page had stopped sending the headers a browser needs to read them, so the map showed "all feeds failed" for every visitor. The feeds are now proxied through our own server, which adds the missing headers and also fixes a second, quieter bug: one of the three feeds used a different field name for its aircraft list, so its data was being silently ignored even on the rare cycle it was reachable.

Statewide Maps on Weather Nerds

• New Statewide Yesterday maps — right under Yesterday’s Extremes, a Minnesota map you can flip between High, Low, and Precip. Every reporting NOAA station in the state is drawn as a colored dot, over a smooth interpolated color field so you can see the pattern across Minnesota at a glance — where it was hot, cold, or wet yesterday. (Rochester is in there too.)
• New The record gets a gold ring — the single hottest, coldest, or wettest spot in the state (the same value shown in Yesterday’s Extremes) is marked with a highlighted ring right where it happened. Tap any dot for that station’s numbers.

Sky Now: Full Screen, Tooltips, and Live Satellites

• New Full screen — tap the ✥ button to expand the sky chart to fill the screen. This uses a CSS-based full screen rather than the browser's native full-screen API, since that API is unreliable on iPhone Safari — so it works the same on any device.
• New Object popups — in full screen, tap or hover any object for a popup card with its icon, a one-line description, and its rise/set time (or, for a satellite, how much longer it stays visible).
• New ISS & Starlink — the space station and the most recently launched Starlink "train" now show up as moving dots when actually overhead. Same honesty rule as the rest of Sky Now: a satellite only appears when it's above the horizon, lit by sunlight, and your sky is dark enough to see it — not just whenever the orbital math says it's technically up there.

More Stats on Records for This Date, and a New Month/Year-to-Date Box

• New Coldest high & warmest low — the Records for This Date box now shows the coldest daytime high and warmest overnight low ever recorded on today's date, alongside the usual hottest/coldest extremes, plus the 30-year average precipitation for the date.
• New Month & Year to Date — a new box shows heating/cooling degree days and precipitation for the month and year so far, compared to the 1991–2020 climate normal, so you can see at a glance whether it's been a warmer, colder, wetter, or drier stretch than usual. It also now leads with yesterday's actual high, low, and precipitation for Rochester.

Animated Home-Page Radar

• Improve Home page radar now animates 4 frames of recent scans instead of a single snapshot, so you can see which way precipitation is moving without opening the full dashboard.

NOAA Weather Radio Map on Weather Nerds

• New NOAA Weather Radio stations — the Weather Nerds page now shows a map of the 22 NWR transmitter sites within 125 miles of Rochester. Green markers have a verified live audio feed on Broadcastify; grey ones don't — NOAA doesn't stream NWR audio itself, and Broadcastify's crowd-sourced coverage misses most stations, including Rochester's own (WXK41).

Print Brochure & This Page

• New Print brochure — a tri-fold, black-and-white PDF for hotel lobbies and visitor centers, with a QR code straight to the live site. Download it from the About window.
• New This page — What's New now has its own standalone page (linked from the header), matching duluthareaweather.com, instead of living only inside the About window.

Earlier Updates

• New Average high/low on Records for This Date — the Weather Nerds records box now shows Rochester's typical high and low for today's date (a rolling 30-year average, same span NWS uses for climate Normals) alongside the all-time records, so you can tell “hot for August” from “just a record.”
• New Ski Areas page — a new standalone map of 49 real, operating downhill ski areas across MN, WI, MI, IA, SD, ND, IL & IN, with resort links and directions. Locations only for now — live trail-open and snow-base status is planned for ski season.
• New AI Forecast — a plain-English weather summary for Rochester, written by Claude AI from the NWS forecast and the meteorologist's own discussion (AFD), with a note on how Owatonna differs when it does. Regenerates only when the underlying forecast actually changes, not on a timer.
• New Sky Now — a live sky chart shows what's overhead right now, any time of day: the sun, moon (with phase), and the five naked-eye planets, plotted against ~1,000 stars and every constellation, facing straight up (N at top, E at left — the correct mirror for looking up, not down at a map). Stars fade out in daylight rather than pretending they're visible, but the sun, moon and planets stay live all day. Tap the sun, moon, or a planet for its rise and set time. Positions computed locally (astronomy-engine, MIT); star & constellation data from d3-celestial (Olaf Frohn, BSD-3-Clause).
• Fix Growing Conditions links — the Drought Monitor link had moved and the old U2U GDD tool is gone; both now point at their current homes (U2U is replaced by the MRCC GDD Tracker).
• New Air quality on the Fire & Smoke map — a new Air quality (AQI) layer shades the region by what is actually breathable, from AirNow's own contour data. The smoke plumes show what a satellite sees overhead; this shows what reaches the ground.
• New Crop prices — front-month CBOT futures for corn, soybeans, wheat and oats now sit below Growing Conditions, with the day's move on each. Delayed quotes, refreshed through the day.
• New Flood forecast on the Zumbro gauges — both river cards now show the National Weather Service flood status next to the USGS flow: the category (No flooding / Action / Minor / Moderate / Major), that gauge's own action stage, and the forecast crest when one is issued. The flow tells you what the river is doing; this tells you where it's headed.
• New Snow on the ground — current snow depth plus the next three days' snowfall. It appears only when there's snow down or snow coming, so it stays out of the way all summer and returns on its own with the first real snow.
• New SPC Day 1 severe-weather outlook — the national convective outlook from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is now on the Weather Nerds page, under “This Date in Weather History”.
• New Flight routes on the aircraft map — tapping a plane still gives type, altitude and speed, and the popup now links that flight straight to FlightAware for origin, destination and history. Also fixes the satellite background, which was showing grey “no imagery” squares instead of photography.
• New Weather Nerds records — the Weather Nerds page shows all-time records for today's date at Rochester (KRST) and statewide, plus yesterday's Minnesota and national high/low/precip — the same NOAA ACIS data as duluthareaweather.com.
• New Regional Dashboard — a full multi-page dashboard (Local / Regional / Road / Wind) in the style of duluthareaweather.com: current conditions, a station map with animated radar and alerts, winter road-sensor conditions, and a live wind-particle map of southeast Minnesota.
• New Growing Conditions — live soil temperature & moisture plus season growing-degree-days and rainfall for SE Minnesota agriculture, with links to USDA crop progress, the U2U GDD tool, and the drought monitor.
• New Site launched — current conditions (Rochester, Owatonna, Austin), 7-day forecast from NWS La Crosse, radar, air quality, moon phase, and South Fork Zumbro / Zumbro Falls river gauges.

These predate this page — dates weren't tracked individually at the time, so they're grouped here rather than guessed. New entries above will carry real dates going forward.