Is this site affiliated or associated with a company or organization?
This site is operated independently and is not associated or affiliated with any group, company or organization. We utilize software and systems from outside companies, groups and organizations but usage is within the terms of the licensing/purchase agreement and our use does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation as specified in the "External Content" section of our site policies.

Who is in charge of operating this site?
This site is operated by a degreed meteorologist with over 6 years of extensive experience in operational meteorology ranging from academia to private sector to public sector. This unique combination of education, experience and unique technical expertise through a variety of operating systems, software platforms and programming languages makes this site possible.

How is your site able to produce all of these products without ads or data fees?
We focus on keeping costs minimal by owning, developing or acquiring licenses for server technology, weather processing and display systems. Nearly all of our data is provided generously through the U.S. Government and educational organizations. Our primary expenses are bandwidth, electricity, server maintenance and software procurement/development. These expenses are privately funded and this site benefits from assistance and advice by professional meteorologists, meteorology students and technical advisors.

Where does this data come from?
The data used to produce content present on this site primarily originates from the United States Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS).

Why does your site not have weather models?
This site was developed to fill a void in the offering of weather data on the internet. There are many great sites that feature numerical predication model information so we limit our offering to current weather analysis and observational data.

How do you produce your weather products?
We utilize a variety of software packages on Linux and Windows platforms to automatically generate our site content. Software used on these operating systems is sourced from commercial enterprises, non-profit organizations and in-house using a variety of software languages, scripts and timers. We use a variety of scripts, custom-made programs along with commercial and open source software to automatically read, decode, format and display this data from Linux and Windows operating systems and publish to this web site on a timed schedule. All products are produced on a precise schedule that keeps system processing and memory loads minimal while providing frequent updates. Please refer to our site policies "Content Disclaimer" section as our products are not official information and they are not to be used for making decisions risking life and property.

Are there future plans for this site?
The primary goal for this site is uptime. We strive for continual reliability, especially during times of inclement conditions. A second goal for this site is to improve the quality and quantity of weather information we provide, particularly products that are not commonly available elsewhere. We strive to meet a delicate balance of providing useful products while keeping server load and costs minimal. We invite suggestions for new or improved existing products provided on this site.

Why does this site focus only on certain areas of the United States?
We have provided weather information on the internet since 1997 through a variety of different web sites. Originally we served the central portion of Alabama through the late 1990's. We expanded our products to cover the Deep South region of the United States through the first decade of the 2000's. Due to the intensive datasets we process with limited resources and budgets we are unable to offer additional geographic coverage at this time. More recently we have developed/utilized some products (Weather Plotter and Storm Reports) to display data for much of the United States. Weather information is not as easily or freely accessible for many areas outside of the United States, which limits our offering of international information.

Why does your site go offline for scheduled maintenance?
To keep operating costs low we own and maintain our own server system and set scheduled maintenance intervals that are posted on our home page. Every few weeks we take our server system offline to apply security patches, upgrade our software and perform system maintenance. By periodically performing preventative maintenance we are able to detect and resolve most problems before they result in unscheduled downtime while keeping our systems in optimal and secure working order. Remember that unscheduled downtime may still occur at any time without notice due to a variety of reasons as specified under "Uptime Availability" on our site policies page.

What web browser is your site optimized for?
We strive to make our site compatible for modern versions of common web browsers. There will be generally subtle differences in the layout, rendering and display of our site between these browsers but we continue to evaluate and look for methods to ensure a similar presentation through these three browsers.

Can I link to or use content on your site?
Linking to content pages on our site is welcome. Our content pages are rather stable but may change locations occasionally. We discourage deep-linking to actual files on our server as those locations can and do change periodically due to server optimization techniques. We request credit be given to "www.doppler5.org" in any use of our files or images. As listed on our site policies page, no content on this site may be used for commercial purposes.

How long does your site usually hold archived data?
We strive to hold onto data for at least a month. Most products are archived for much longer but we do purge them every few months as we lack storage capacity to retain archived data for a longer term.