Themes level infomation .better than EA site

Certainly looks good to me. Why on earth would EA wish to close it down when it so obviously compliments their site and gives Credits where applicable.
 
534l4rk said:
Think you mean the 'About' page. Problem with using data from the E.A. monitor stations on the Thames is as I have commented before that the reference level dates do not go back even to 2003.
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Whoops, sorry yes you are correct. I was doing it from memory, says a lot! :)
 
An excellent site indeed. One point for anyone interested mainly in the tidal / semi-tidal region - riverlevels.info's sampling interval seems to be much larger than that used for the 48 hour charts on the EA site, to the extent that riverlevels.info may not show the tidal variation at all, which could be misleading to readers unfamiliar with this part of the river.
 
I agree that the river levels site is useful - for example for us, at the Dorchester end of the Thame, being able to see what is happening further up the river quickly is useful in giving us some idea of what is likely to happen here and when we might want to move animals about. Also useful having the movement from the last reading, although annoyingly it doesn't tell us when that reading was taken. What would be really handy would be to show the last three or four readings for each site, and obviously the time it was taken.

The most annoying thing about the EA site is that most days they read Stadhampton at 4.30 in the morning and don't update it until 24 hours later. Having said that though, yesterday, when obviously there was a bit of a flap on, they seemed to be reading it almost hourly intervals, which was good.

As someone said earlier, why don't the EA get off their high horse and give this chap a job - fat chance!
 
Wearing my TMBA hat, I decided to investigate this issue and why the EA had apparently refused consent. As always it is not as simple as it may initially appear.
Anyways, I have now been advised that there has been a change of policy which may be helpful to the website owner.

The good news for the owner of the river conditions website is that access to river levels data, at least for a short while, is now free. However, ‘scraping’ of data is still not acceptable because that method of gathering data will result in the information on the river conditions website being out of synch (less up-to-date) with the information on the EA’s website – which is not ideal if users of the river conditions website are making decisions based on the information displayed (ie about the risk of flooding to their property – not that they should of course).

I understand that, If the owner of the river conditions website was to get in touch with the EA again, they can find out how the data can be accessed for reuse in a sufficiently resilient way, at no cost.
 
I personaly would never go to third party source of data, if you are in any way depending on it use the EA data as it is the source.
I guess the Stadhampton station is manually read, I use the one at Days lock nearby on the main river and this meter is an automated gauge that updates
every hour http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/riverlevels/136497.aspx?stationId=7086

It is sometimes annoying to not have the historical data but in times of flood like recently you should be following it everyday anyway and get to know the levels on your stretch.
This is one area the EA has improved massively in the last few years and it has been invaluable for me to know when to go down and check on the boat.
 
boatone said:
Wearing my TMBA hat, I decided to investigate this issue and why the EA had apparently refused consent. As always it is not as simple as it may initially appear.
Anyways, I have now been advised that there has been a change of policy which may be helpful to the website owner.

The good news for the owner of the river conditions website is that access to river levels data, at least for a short while, is now free. However, ‘scraping’ of data is still not acceptable because that method of gathering data will result in the information on the river conditions website being out of synch (less up-to-date) with the information on the EA’s website – which is not ideal if users of the river conditions website are making decisions based on the information displayed (ie about the risk of flooding to their property – not that they should of course).

I understand that, If the owner of the river conditions website was to get in touch with the EA again, they can find out how the data can be accessed for reuse in a sufficiently resilient way, at no cost.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Tony-TMBA. It's good to see a (small and growing) organisation is prepared to ferret around to five boaters at large a valuable service.

Many thanks,
Mike
 
Thanks B1 for taking the trouble to follow this up - interesting stuff.

Chris_d - I don't think you are right in saying that they are manually read, because for most of this week all the River Thame stations have been read at 4.30 in the morning, so someone must have a very fast motorbike to get from Dorchester to above Aylesbury! The frustrating thing for us is that, with a couple of exceptions. they are not read again until 4.30 the next morning, not so important now while the river is going down, but last weekend when we were trying to ascertain how high the river was going to come and whether it was going to be as high as at the beginning of the month when it flooded our lambing nursery barn, and whether we needed to evacuate the two/three day old lambs and their mums it would have been nice to have seen a reading at less than 24 hour intervals. Why can't they read, and publish it, at fixed times, six or eight hours apart.

In fairness to the river levels website, he is picking up the information pretty quickly, and I don't think I have ever found that the EA site has gone up, or down, and it hasn't been reflected on the river levels site.

Anyway the sun is shining, the river levels are going down, all we need is a quick 5 minute heavy shower to rinse the mud off the grass!! Well, we can wish! :)
 
Hmm, Your relying on him interpreting the data correctly and presenting it correctly as well.

Better tick to the real deal and make my own interpretation I think!

CJL
 
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/river.php?wfo=ilm&wfoid=18790&riverid=203895&pt%5B%5D=all&allpoints=146065%2C141339%2C144635%2C144070%2C141596%2C145732%2C145714&data%5B%5D=all The link is to an American site giving river levels. The addition of the predicted level is a vast improvement over the E.A. online graph. When increasing levels are shown and updates are at prolonged intervals the only way of finding out how the river is performing is to go down to the river bank. Not very convenient, particularly after dark. If this were a commercial organisation they'd go bust if they met their customers needs so badly.
 
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