WMWEATHER(1)

okay bestie, so this is the wmweather(1) manual page β€” Version 2.4.9 β€” and it's literally your lil dockable weather monitor that sits in your dock and tells you if it's giving jacket weather or not 🌦️✨ no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

wmweather β€” dockable weather monitor πŸ›°οΈπŸ’–


🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

wmweather -s <4-char ICAO location indicator> [options]

πŸ’… DESCRIPTION πŸ’…

okay so wmweather monitors your local weather conditions: temperature, dew point, pressure, humidity and wind direction and speed. the way that you HAVE to give it a 4-character `ICAO location indicator' though?? yeah, non-negotiable 🫢

those standardized METAR station designations and current weather reports are designed for use by the aviation community ✈️, and since most major cities have at least one airport, there's usually one or more METAR stations in a given city. so like, you're covered, don't stress.

and obviously πŸ’€ you need to be connected to the internet, and you also need libcurl installed. wmweather will then attempt to download the latest METAR report for the station of your choice from the National Weather Service run by NOAA 🌸.

you can toggle back and forth between imperial and metric units btw, i.e. between degrees Fahrenheit, inches of Mercury, and miles per hour β€” and β€” degrees Celsius, hectoPascal, and kilometers per hour. a middle click does this πŸ”.

also!! a left click will bring up the fully decoded METAR report in xmessage. and a right click will force an immediate update, i.e. wmweather will attempt to grab weather information. main character energy fr fr πŸ‘‘


πŸŽ€ OPTIONS πŸŽ€

  • -s id, --station=id β€” this one tells wmweather which METAR station to show data for. id can be any four-letter ICAO location indicator, which you can find at https://www.notams.faa.gov/common/icao/ 🌍
  • -c, --compat β€” switch into compatibility mode. the old monitor style gets used, the default metric pressure units become millimeters of Mercury instead of hectoPascal, and the colorization options get enabled 🎨. so when the time turns red, that means the weather report is older than 24 hours ⏰. when the wind speed turns red, that means the wind is gusty and the listed value is an average only πŸ’¨. similarly, a red direction means a variable wind direction and the value given is the average direction. also the symbolic link wmWeather is functionally equivalent to wmweather --compat 🫢
  • -d [@]min, --delay=[@]min β€” set the time (in minutes) between updates, default is 15 minutes. use @ to specify minutes past the hour πŸ•°οΈ
  • -m, --metric β€” display metric values: temperatures in degrees Celsius rather than degrees Fahrenheit, pressure in hectoPascal rather than inches of Mercury, and wind speed in kilometers per hour rather than miles per hour. this option can be toggled at runtime using a middle click 🌑️
  • -i, --imperial β€” display imperial values: temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit rather than degrees Celsius, pressure in inches of Mercury rather than hectoPascal, and wind speed in miles per hour rather than kilometers per hour. this option can be toggled at runtime using a middle click πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
  • -w, --chill, -W β€” display wind chill β€” if available β€” instead of dew point temperature πŸ₯Ά
  • -e, --heat β€” display wind heat index β€” if available β€” instead of temperature πŸ₯΅
  • -b, --beaufort β€” display wind speed on the `Beaufort scale' 🌬️
  • -n, --knots β€” display wind speed in units of knots, i.e. sea miles per hour βš“
  • -u, --utc β€” display update time in UTC instead of localtime. this is equivalent to --time=+0000 🌐
  • -t offset, --time=offset β€” convert update time according to (RFC 822 compliant) time offset rather than to localtime, e.g. --time=+0100 for MET ⏳
  • -x host[:port], --proxy=host[:port] β€” proxy specification, this option is passed to libcurl πŸ”Œ
  • -U username[:password], --proxy-user=username[:password] β€” proxy authentication, this option is passed to libcurl πŸ”
bestie PLEASE don't specify this option πŸ™ˆ use the file ~/.netrc for authentication instead. i'm literally begging you.
  • --lcd β€” use LCD style display πŸ–₯️
  • --display=id β€” set the display to use, e.g. --display=:0.0 πŸͺŸ
  • --geometry=pos β€” set the position of the dock app. note that the size (64x64) is hard-coded and cannot be changed πŸ“
  • -h, --help β€” display a list of command-line options πŸ†˜
  • -v, --version β€” display the program version πŸ”’
  • -a, --hPa β€” when toggled to metric, display pressure in units of hectoPascals, i.e. milliBars πŸ“Š
  • -k, --kPa β€” when toggled to metric, display pressure in units of kiloPascals πŸ“ˆ
  • -g, --mmHg β€” when toggled to metric, display pressure in units of millimeters of Mercury 🌑️
  • -p, --mps β€” when toggled to metric, display wind speed in units of meters per second πŸƒ
  • --bc=color β€” when toggled to compatibility mode, set the background color (#8e8e69 is LCD-ish) 🎨
  • --lc=color β€” when toggled to compatibility mode, set the color of the labels, e.g. --lc=red or --lc=salmon or --lc=#4523ff 🏷️
  • --dc=color β€” when toggled to compatibility mode, set the color of the data entries πŸ“
  • --wgc=color β€” when toggled to compatibility mode, set the gusty-wind/variable-direction color πŸ’¨. the wind speed indicator will turn this color when the wind speed is gusty. the value shown in this case is the average speed. similarly, the wind direction indicator with change to this color when the wind direction is variable. the value shown in this case is the average direction 🧭
  • --tc=color β€” when toggled to compatibility mode, set the color of the ICAO location indicator and update time header πŸ•

πŸ¦‹ FILES πŸ¦‹

  • /etc/wmweather.conf β€” the system-wide configuration file. specify one long option per line, e.g. station=EDDC or metric. whitespace, empty lines, and lines beginning with a # will be ignored πŸ™…
  • ~/.wmweather/config β€” the user configuration file 🏠
  • ~/.wmweather/???? β€” these files contain the latest downloaded weather records in decoded METAR format πŸ“‚
  • ~/.netrc β€” these file contains authentication information and should be used in preference to --proxy-user πŸ”‘

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

  • http_proxy β€” the HTTP proxy to be used, see also --proxy 🌐

πŸ’œ SEE ALSO πŸ’œ

to find out more about NOAA's National Weather Service, have a look at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ 🌦️


πŸ’€ BUGS πŸ’€

please report any bugs to <martin@godisch.de> πŸ›. Debian users are encouraged to use the Debian Bug Tracking System at http://bugs.debian.org/wmweather 🫢


πŸ‘‘ AUTHORS πŸ‘‘

Version 1:

  • Michael G. Henderson <mghenderson@lanl.gov>

Version 2:

  • Martin A. Godisch <martin@godisch.de>

Contributors:

  • Athanasius, Pablo Castellazzi, Avtar Gill, Adam Lackorzynski, Jon Larabee, Jordi Mallach, Paul Martin, HIROSE Masaaki, Michael PΓΆtters

and that's the whole page bestie πŸŽ€ this one's Version 2.4.9, dated June 2026, brought to you by The Debian Project β€” go check the weather, drink some water, and slay πŸ’–βœ¨πŸ¦‹

πŸ“¦ where this page comes from