Meteociel Weather Scraper

This is a personal Python script that fetches and parses hourly weather forecast data from Meteociel for specified locations through their URL. It scrapes table data from Meteociel forecast pages and returns a structured DataFrame for analysis. If executed from outside, it prints a summary of the data, or if the '-p' option is given, plots the main weather features in ASCII.

Features

1. Weather Data Fetching:

   • The script retrieves a detailed weather table from a given MeteoCiel URL and parses it into a structured DataFrame.
   • Columns include: Date, Time, Temperature, Feels Like, Wind Direction, Wind Speed, Wind Gust, Precipitation, Humidity, and Pressure.

2. ASCII Plotting:

   • If the plotille library is available, the script can produce ASCII-based plots for key weather variables (Temperature, Wind Speed, and Precipitation).
   • Plotting is triggered by adding the -p flag when running the script from the command line.
   • Time is shown in hourly increments, with temperature, wind speed, and precipitation displayed in individual subplots.

Usage

From Within Python

from meteociel import fetch_weather

# Example: Fetch Paris weather data from the AROME model
url = 'https://www.meteociel.fr/previsions-arome-1h/27817/paris.htm'
weather = fetch_weather(url)
print(weather)

From the Command Line

If run without the -p flag, the script will output a summary table of Date, Time, Temperature, Wind Speed, Wind Gust, Precipitation, and Humidity:

python meteociel.py https://www.meteociel.fr/previsions-arome-1h/27817/paris.htm

To enable ASCII plotting, use the -p flag:

python meteociel.py -p https://www.meteociel.fr/previsions-arome-1h/27817/paris.htm

Dependencies

• pandas: Data manipulation and analysis.
• requests: HTTP requests for fetching web pages.
• beautifulsoup4: HTML parsing and data extraction.
• plotille (optional): ASCII plotting library for enhanced data visualization in the terminal.

Acknowledgements

This project was greatly improved thanks to the valuable insight of Dr. Vallés, whose expertise in the quokks field made this an elegant tool for weather display.