A mobile forecast page on a personal weather website is a compact view of predicted weather for a location, formatted for a small screen. It is not the station’s thermometer, and it is not an official warning product. The whole job of the page is to keep those categories from collapsing into one unlabeled “weather” blob while someone is standing outside with a phone.
The historical URL /m/forecast was the forecast slice of a mobile (/m) Cumulus layout. This article does not restore that interface, does not document login variants, and does not pitch a connection outlook. It explains how a station site should label forecast versus observation when both appear on a handheld view.
Historical context
In the late 2000s, weather-station operators added stripped pages for phones: fewer images, stacked text, sometimes WAP-era markup, later simple HTML. A common pattern was a “forecast” tab next to “now.” The “now” tab was logger data. The “forecast” tab was usually a National Weather Service product, a model-based text, or a third-party script. Visitors, and later search snippets, treated both tabs as the backyard station.
The original weather-station site is not an NWS office. TNET Weather is not an NWS office. Official U.S. public forecasts and alerts are issued by the National Weather Service. A Cumulus mobile page that relayed them was a convenience copy. It did not become authoritative by being local.
Forecast and observation are different evidence
Observation. A value measured at the station (or at an official observing site) at a stated time: temperature, humidity, rain, wind, pressure. A temperature chart and a current-conditions line are observations. They describe the past and the present of a sensor.
Forecast. A statement about a future interval, produced by a forecast office or a numerical model, valid for a grid point, a zone, or a city. NWS forecasts are created at Weather Forecast Offices on a defined grid; they are not the PWS logger. Model output (a GFS or other run) is also a forecast family, with a cycle time and a lead time that must be named.
Derived. Wind chill, heat index, “feels like,” and similar indexes are calculated from observations or from forecast fields. They are not extra thermometers.
Warning. Watches, warnings, and advisories are official hazard products. They are not monthly climate and not a backyard gauge color. Direct readers to weather.gov and local emergency authorities for hazards. A legacy article, and TNET, must not be used as a replacement warning service.
A mobile page that prints “72° and sunny” without saying whether that is the sensor at 14:03 or the NWS period for this afternoon has failed. The same number can be either family.
Label the source on a small screen
Small screens tempt operators to drop footnotes. That is the wrong place to drop them. The mobile forecast view should show, in text:
- Product name — NWS zone forecast, NWS hourly, a named model, or “station observation.”
- Issuing office or model cycle — for NWS, the forecast office; for a model, the run time.
- Valid time — the period the forecast covers, with timezone.
- Location the forecast is for — city, zone, or grid, which may not be the backyard.
- When the page fetched it — retrieval time is not valid time.
- A one-line disclaimer — this site relays; it does not issue.
If the mobile view also shows the station’s current temperature, put it in a separate block titled as observation, with its own timestamp. Do not let CSS make the forecast headline look like a live needle.
XML and other machine feeds that mixed both families need the same split when parsed; see /parse_xml.php. Runtime notes for the PHP that rendered the mobile view belong in a private log, not on the forecast screen; see /phpversion.
What a PWS forecast tab is not
It is not a substitute for the NWS point-and-click forecast or the NWS API. Those remain the official U.S. sources for public forecast text and alerts.
It is not a nowcast of the backyard unless you have a documented, separate nowcasting method—and a Cumulus template almost never did. Showing the last observation next to a forecast icon is juxtaposition, not validation.
It is not a Starlink performance promise. Weather can be relevant to connectivity research, but a mobile forecast page from a 2000s station site does not estimate download speed, latency, or plan fitness. This article does not route that question into a product pitch.
It is not “more accurate because it is local.” A roof sensor does not outrank an NWS forecast for tomorrow’s regional rain. Local observation can disagree with a forecast; that disagreement is useful only if both sides are labeled.
Practical layout for a handheld forecast view
Use a linear order:
- Station identity (so the user knows whose phone page this is).
- Observation block: current values, units, observation time.
- Forecast block: source, valid times, text or period summaries.
- Hazards: link out to official alerts, do not paraphrase them into cute icons without the official headline.
- Fetch time and a note that the page is unofficial.
Avoid autoplaying radar under the forecast text on a constrained radio link if the historical goal of /m/ was a thin page. A forecast sentence plus a link is a complete mobile product. A megabyte of unlabeled imagery is not.
If a script cannot retrieve the NWS product, show a retrieval failure, not the last cached forecast dressed as current. Stale forecast text is still a forecast, but it is an old one; the valid-time line must show that.
Practical checklist
- Observation and forecast are separate headings.
- NWS or model source is named; TNET is not named as the issuer.
- Valid time and retrieval time are both present.
- Units appear in the observation block.
- Warnings link to official NWS/local sources.
- No login wall is implied; this URL is an article, not an account page.
- No connection-speed claims.
Modern relevance
Handheld weather reading still fails in the same way: one card, mixed families, missing source. TNET’s public explanation of observed versus modelled versus derived information is how the service works. That page is methodology for a connection-intelligence product. It is not a warning feed and not a replacement for weather.gov. Cumulus-era mobile publishing sits on the Cumulus legacy hub.
This URL does not issue forecasts. It states how a station’s mobile forecast view should have been labeled.
Sources
- National Weather Service, official forecasts and alerts: weather.gov
- National Weather Service, API documentation (forecasts, observations, and alerts as separate resources): weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
- World Meteorological Organization, Guide to Instruments and Methods of Observation (WMO-No. 8): community.wmo.int
- TNET, How the service works