“Hey, there’s a tweet from the @coworkout bot: tomorrow’s Sandex is 94%! That means we’re working outside!”
The “SANDEX” is the index that helps you decide if the weather is awesome enough to work outdoors.
The idea of the Sandex is based on how close your local weather is to the theoretically-perfect weather in San Diego, California. Because every day is a work-outside day in San Diego. Right? That’s also where the name comes from. Well, Randy is where the name comes from.
The Sandex is actually calculated based on the “Thermal Comfort” research of professor Ole Fanger, the mustachioed Danish scholar whose work in the 1960s and 1970s is the basis for modern HVAC engineering.
You can read more about Ole Fanger in this blog post, and you can follow work that’s emerging to automatically derive the Sandex from NOAA forecasts in this ruby gem.
Basically, a high Sandex means:
- Relative humidity is between 30% and 60%,
- The temperature is between the upper sixties and the low eighties, and
- There’s a low probability of precipitation
I’m trying to add pollen to the forecast, but I’m having trouble finding an API to return pollen count. If anyone has any ideas there, I’d love to hear them!
They seem to have pulled down the info that used to be online but I think the Accuweather folks provide both Pollen and UV index via their API. They can be kind of _dumb_ about redistributing their data, though – they make you jump through hoops when lots of folks like Yahoo! and Google are basically giving away weather data for free.
Tom, agreed: I’m trying to stick with NOAA’s data because I’ve already paid for it, and they obviously spend lots and lots of time working on their APIs.
Here’s what I’ve found:
* Weatherbug: non-abusive API agreement (just show our logo and a link back), contains lots of data and has lots of volunteer stations. Does not have pollen.
* Accuweather: restrictive, almost punitive API (we give you a set of text-ad-style links, you must show them). Does not have pollen.
* airnow.gov: Awesome index of “things that are bad for you in the air”, but this does not include pollen. This is for smoke and toxic chemicals, etc. However, they were really friendly, and pointed me to:
* http://www.aaaai.org/ which has awesome, transparent data (unlike all the other pollen indexes, they tell you WHEN the last sample was taken.) Haven’t heard back from them to see if they have an API yet.
[...] The Sandex [...]
I just stumbled upon your Coworkout site and concept and wondered if I might implement it near me. Where am I? San Diego. Yeah, that’s happening!