Readit Newscameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
> I'd love feedback on anything, such as how to improve the UI/UX of the mobile view of the map page.
Looks great, the UI is snappy and impressively fast.
One thing I would suggest is defaulting to the “Mean annual depth” background, as I’m viewing a rainfall specific website and would expect to see that.
You could also update the URL with the map state, like [1] Windy does on their site (and google maps)
[1] https://www.windy.com/-Rain-accumulation-rainAccu?rainAccu,n...
I've changed the map so that it plots annual depth by default now.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
Two suggestions that I think would ease exploration:
I'd like to see some representation of rainfall on the top level map to help discover interesting areas to drill into more detail.
The pop up to choose between seasonal/extreme feels unnecessary when I can select the corresponding tab on the subequent page.
Thanks—I've changed the map so that it plots annual depth by default now. Yes I agree the popup is "unnecessary", but I wanted to make it easy for the site to be used for extreme stats without having to wade through seasonal stats first.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
Very nice site.
I encountered a bug while the "Look up monthly and annual statistics" popup was showing. Without closing the popup, I clicked "Seasonal data" button. That opened up the "Precipitation Statistics page" with the "Look up monthly and annual statistics" popup still overlayed and the page grey. The popup buttons still worked (I could press Next to get the "Get statistics for modeling floods" text), but closing the popup resulted in the page remaining grey.
Firefox 117 on Kubuntu 22.04.
Thanks for letting me know—I've fixed that bug now.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
Exactly - I can tell you an example from India. India has the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) precipitation dataset. Even if your estimates are more accurate, no company will use your dataset to design/validate a civil engineering design. This has to do with liability of using a dataset from a "non-official" source. Right now, you are stuck in the middle where it is not viable for non-US companies to use it, while US companies will mostly rely on NOAA Atlas. If this is to become a public-facing product, then the current pricing is too high, and might have to develop an alternative business model. Maybe people are interested in checking the floodplain zonation/xrain before buying a house, for example. But no SAAS in that case.
How flexible is your codebase to incorporate regional datasets? I think you will have to regional merging.
What are your current costs of running the setup? Any possibility/plans of white-labeling the codebase?
You're probably right, at least for a decent chunk of the world.
Regional merging would be valuable, but compiling a comprehensive set of high-resolution (sub-daily) rainfall data might be quite hard.
Hosting costs are reasonably low. What do you have in mind with respect to white labelling? (what use cases were you thinking?)
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
You buried a lot of great analysis in your white paper that is hard to find! The comparison to NOAA Atlas 14 really shows what to expect with this dataset and how to better use it.
My guess is that potential customers who know how to use this data with their flood model also know how to derive this data from the sources. You may need to compute inundation maps for X year return periods in order to reach customers who need this information but don't know how to use flood models.
Really nice website and backend though! It's so fast even given the volume of data. Very impressive
Thanks. I'll have a think about how I can make those comparison plots easier to find.
Yep, inundation mapping would certainly be useful to a much wider number of people. I'll have to look into the existing competition and work out whether there's space in the market for another player.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
The UI is fantastic . I don't think there is anything wrong with the website. The reason you are not making a sale has probably nothing to do with UI. I think you should concentrate on sales and filling an important gap in user requirement. Who needs this data? There are already many websites where you can get extreme precipitation data for free.
P.S. I am a hydroclimate scientist/professor. Happy to discuss further.
Edit - Looks like we have almost the same background in academics. :)
Yes, I've been focused on sales only for a number of months.
XRain is mostly designed to help in situations where data (free or otherwise) isn't available from anywhere else.
However I've come to realise that most places have some sort of data that they use and are familiar with, even if that data isn't very good. As a result people/companies haven't been very willing to part with their cash.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
So... today I learned that I live at .. 60N. Tiles are available 10km to the south of me, but not where I live. :P
Oh! I've had to be careful to avoid saying it's available "anywhere", because there are certainly people like you who live above 60°N or below 60°S.
cameronoliver commented on Show HN: XRain – Explore rainfall statistics around the world xrain.info/data/... · Posted by u/cameronoliver
I've watched this being built and it's been really cool seeing how well SolidJS works. I was initially dubious ("No one gets fired for picking React", right?) but it seems like it made for really easy development.
How hard would it be to add a choropleth view showing metrics such as 1-year 24-hour depth across the globe?
Thanks! Chloropeths of extreme depths in the map page is a good idea actually.
I think you meant Llama.
The rhymes are admittedly more limited, unless you have a Boston accent.