You can ask WxAdvisory any weather-related question via Twitter - just send a tweet to @WxAdvisory.
All you need to do is to include a location, either by using Twitter's location service, or by specifying a city, town or street address in your tweet.
For example:
"Will it rain this afternoon in Sydney?"
You'll receive a reply within a few minutes.
If you use Twitter's location services in the tweet, then you don't even need to include the location.
Regular alerts
If you want to receive an alert on a regular basis, as an answer to a question, you can include the '#alert' hashtag to the question. By default, you'll be advised every morning at 3am, but you can change this by including more hashtags from the following lists:
- #daily
- #weekdays (this includes the days Monday-Friday)
- #weekends
- #monday (also takes any specific day of the week)
You can also specify days you don't want alerts, with these hashtags:
- #notmonday (or #notwednesday etc)
- #notweekdays
- #notweekends
If 3am is too early for notifications, you can also include a preferred time, like this:
- #7am
- #5pm
Time requests get rounded down to the nearest hour, so 3:50pm becomes 3pm. You can also include multiple time hashtags if you want to be alerted throughout the day.
So if you want a tweet every weekday at 6am, but not Friday, you can do this:
"Will it be rainy this morning in London? #alert #weekdays #notfriday #6am"
#wx hashtags
Most replies you get from @WxAdvisory will include a hashtag that looks like this: #wx1234.
For example, a tweet answer might look like this:
"No. Clear overnight becoming cloudy before midday #wx1234"
If you are replying via direct messages, then you'll need to include this hashtag so we can relate this reply to the original message. Normal tweet replies do not need to use this, but you can use it if you just want to send an ordinary tweet without it being a reply.
Unsubscribing
If you don't want alerts on this question any more, just reply back to an answer with the hashtag "#noalert" or the single word "unsubscribe". If this is a direct message, don't forget the #wx hashtag.
Direct messages
Everything you can do by ordinary tweet messages, you can do with direct messages. The only catch is that if you're replying, you MUST use the #wx hashtag (it looks like '#wx1234'). If you don't do that, it won't be treated as a reply and may not result in anything.
As per Twitter's rules, you'll need to follow WxAdvisory before you can send direct messages. Shortly after you do that, @WxAdvisory will automatically follow you back, so we can send messages to each other.
Conversations
Sometimes you might forget to include the location.
"I didn't see a location. Please mention a city or street, or turn on location services."
@WxAdvisory will reply back advising you that you need to include a city, town or street address - or you can use Twitter's location services if they are available.
You can reply back to this message with the location you're interested in. If it's a direct message, you'll need to include the #wx hashtag as a reference.
If you found this forecast to be useful, you can create an alert based off the original question. To do this, just reply back with '#alert' and any other day and time hashtags you need (direct messages will also require the #wx hashtag).
You can also change an existing alert by replying back to the original message or any subsequent replies with the new question, new location or new hashtags.
Your current alerts
If you've forgotton what you've created alerts for, or want to unsubscribe from them without waiting for a reply, you can send a message to @WxAdvisory with just the hashtag '#list' like this:
@WxAdvisory #list
You'll get replied back with response including the #wx hashtag for each alert you have. You can change or unsubscribe from these by referencing this hashtag in your tweet.
Getting help
You can find this page by tweeting 'help' to @WxAdvisory. You can also tweet any other questions to @geoffmunn.
