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The slides the map stage cycles through, in order. Switch one off to drop it from the rotation without losing how it was set up.

The special weather statement slide takes its turn only while a statement carrying hail or wind tags is in force, and shows the same threat bars a severe thunderstorm warning gets. Add it here for the rotation, or on the Warning Mode tab to give it a turn during a warning.

The severe watch slide takes its turn only while a tornado or severe thunderstorm watch is in force, and frames itself on the ground that watch covers — so its zoom, lat and lng are a starting point rather than a setting. Switch it off here to keep watches off the rotation entirely.

The mesoscale discussion slide only takes its turn while the SPC has one in force for the state named in its mcdstate setting; the rest of the time the rotation steps straight past it. It frames itself on the discussion, so its zoom, lat and lng are only a starting point. The storm reports slide shows every local storm report of the past 24 hours — tornado, hail, wind, flooding and the rest — as icons on the map. Drop a kind from lsrcat to leave it off; remove the setting entirely and every kind is drawn. A station slide is one weather station in full: the temperature, the other readings, and a line of the past day. Change id= for a different station — the ids are the ones in ambient-config.php, and the endpoint at /api/ambient.php lists them all.

The severe outlook slide shows the SPC convective outlook. The button adds whichever of Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 are not already there, so pressing it three times gives you the set; each is an ordinary slide afterwards and can be reordered, retimed or switched off on its own.

Any label can name the day of the week. Write {dow} for today, {dow+1} for tomorrow, {dow+2} for the day after, and so on up to a week ahead — so {dow+1}’s Severe Weather Outlook goes on air as Thursday’s Severe Weather Outlook. The day is worked out when the slide comes round rather than when the overlay loads, so a stream left running overnight renames itself instead of still saying yesterday’s day. This works in any slide’s label, not just the outlooks.

Forecast slides can name their period with {period1} to {period4}. These follow the clock the way the forecast does, so {period1} Forecast goes on air as Today’s Forecast through the day, Tonight’s Forecast after six, and Rest of Tonight’s Forecast in the small hours. The four run:

Midnight–6am	Rest of Tonight’s · Today’s · Wednesday Night’s · Thursday’s
6am–6pm	Today’s · Tonight’s · Tomorrow’s · Thursday Night’s
6pm–midnight	Tonight’s · Tomorrow’s · Thursday Night’s · Friday’s

The apostrophe is part of what the token returns, so write {period2} Forecast rather than adding one yourself. Like {dow}, it is worked out when the slide comes round, so a stream left running renames its own slides as the evening turns.

The outlook slides use {spc1}, {spc2} and {spc3} instead, which name the weekday SPC’s Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 actually cover. These are not the same as {dow}. SPC’s convective day runs from 12Z to 12Z, so through the small hours Day 1 is the day that began yesterday morning and Day 2 is the daytime ahead of you. A label counting forward from today named the wrong day for those hours; {spc2} follows the convective day and is right at any hour. Day 1’s own slide is called Current rather than Today for the same reason.

Precipitation slides can name the hours they cover with {qpf6}, {qpf24}, {qpf48}, {qpf72}, {qpf120} and {qpf168}. Each returns the clock times of that running total — Rainfall Forecast · {qpf24} goes on air as Rainfall Forecast · Tue 7am – Wed 7am CDT. The weekday is dropped from the far end when both times fall on the same day, so {qpf6} usually reads Tue 7am – 1pm CDT.

Times are written as short as they can be said — 7am rather than 7:00 AM — to leave room for your own wording in the title. The minutes appear only when they are not on the hour, which for a WPC product is almost never, so a window that does land at half past still reads 7:30am.

Unlike the tokens above, these are read from the Weather Prediction Center rather than worked out from the clock, and that is the point of them. The map panel labels its steps Next 24 hr and the like, but those run from the model’s valid time rather than from now — a four-hour-old run means next 24 is really twenty more hours plus four already gone. A viewer reads “next 24 hours” as starting now; these tokens say what it actually covers.

They are fetched when the overlay loads and refreshed every half hour. In the first seconds after a cold start, or if the service will not answer, the token returns nothing and a trailing separator is tidied away — so Rainfall Forecast · {qpf24} reads simply Rainfall Forecast rather than trailing a dot with nothing after it. A label that does not use the token is never touched.

Rain that has already fallen — Maps › Precip Amount, and the local radar’s Precip Amount — uses {precip} instead. The {qpf} tokens are a forecast window ahead; a Precip Amount map looks back, ending at its latest data, so {qpf24} on one would put tomorrow’s dates over yesterday’s rain. {precip} is read from the map on screen once it has drawn, for whatever time frame the slide is set to (hours= 1 to 72, or accum= 1h, 3h or storm): Rainfall · {precip} on a 24 Hr slide reads Rainfall · Sat 5pm – Sun 5pm CDT, and on a 3 Hr slide Rainfall · Sun 2pm – 5pm CDT. A Storm Total runs from when the radar started counting. Until the map has drawn it reads nothing, with the separator tidied away as above.

The map itself is asked for with map=forecastprecip&qpf=24, taking the same hours as the tokens: 6, 24, 48, 72, 120 and 168. Without qpf= the panel opens on its own default, which is the first six-hour interval rather than a running total — so a slide meaning “rain through Thursday” must say which. An hours figure the panel does not have is ignored and noted in the console rather than guessed at.

So a slide reading Rainfall Forecast · {qpf48} with map=forecastprecip&qpf=48&zoom=6 names the same window in its title as it draws on its map. The two numbers have to be written to agree — nothing checks that they do.

Precipitation maps are beta-gated like the other forecast views, so the link needs beta=yes alongside them.

The names change over at 1am CDT in summer and midnight CST in winter. That is one moment, not two: it is 06Z either way, and only the clock on the wall moves.

06Z is not where the convective day begins — that is 12Z — it is where Day 1 changes hands. SPC publishes the first Day 1 outlook for a new day at 0600Z, valid 1200Z to 1200Z; the 0100Z issuance before it covers only the tail of the day going out. So from 1am the map is already showing the coming day as Day 1, and the labels follow it there. Later issuances at 1300Z and 1630Z revise that same outlook rather than replace the day, which is why the picture visibly changes mid-morning without the names needing to.

The share-your-station slide is the on-air invitation for viewers to send in their own Ambient Weather station, pointing them at the sign-up page on the site. It is an ordinary slide — move it where you want it in the order, or switch it off between campaigns. Its bg= is the photograph behind it, shift= nudges that photograph sideways, and qr= is the code shown; the QR simply does not appear if that file is missing. The card animates once as it loads and then holds still, so its Holds-for seconds only decide how long it stays up.

What the stage does while a warning is in force. Every warning gets a turn, then any extra slides, then the storm reports, and round again.

Tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings cannot be switched off — they are what Warning Mode is for. Their timings and titles can be changed.

Extra slides that join the warning cycle, after the warnings and before the storm reports. A wide radar is the usual one — a warning map is framed tight on a single storm and says nothing about the rest of the state.

A third state, between an ordinary afternoon and a warning. It comes on by itself when a Tornado Watch or a Severe Thunderstorm Watch is in force, or when a Special Weather Statement carries a hail or wind threat.

It exists because the hour before a warning is not an ordinary hour and should not look like one. A watch is out, and the channel is still cycling through dew points and tomorrow’s highs. These slides are that hour’s rundown, and they replace the Main Stage rotation for as long as it lasts.

Nothing else changes. The music stays as it is, the rail keeps its city forecasts, and the logo changes only because a watch is out — which it already does on its own.

A warning outranks it. The moment one is issued, Warning Mode takes the stage and Standby stands down; it picks up again when the warning clears.

Slides work exactly as they do on the Main Stage: put map parameters in the box, or a page beginning with / to load a whole page instead. An empty list means Standby Mode does nothing at all.

The three below open this rundown, before any slides you add. They moved here from the Main Stage rotation: all three are about weather that has turned, and this is the state for exactly that.

Each declines its turn when it has nothing to show, so the rundown does not stall on a storm report that never came in. With nothing added underneath them, those three are the whole of Standby Mode.

Better names for weather stations, on the map and on the stream alike. Roadside RWIS sites are called things like SD614, and airport sites go by their code — fine on a console, wrong beside a temperature on air.

Use the station's own id: SD614 for RWIS, HON or ATY for an airport, the id from ambient-config.php for your own stations. Anything not listed keeps the name its feed supplies.

The cities whose forecast appears in the right-hand rail, between passes of the news stories. One city per turn, the next one the time after, round and round.

In Warning Mode this slot goes back to the weather stations. A forecast for tomorrow afternoon is worth the room on an ordinary evening and is the wrong thing entirely beside a tornado warning — so the same space carries live readings from near the polygon instead, and returns to the forecast when the warning clears. Nothing here needs changing for that to happen.

Four periods are shown by default — typically tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night and the day after. The wording is the National Weather Service's own.

Search for a city to add it. The coordinates are looked up once, here, and stored with the name — the NWS forecast API does not geocode, so this is the one thing it cannot work out for itself. The name is free text and is what goes on air: shorten “Sioux Falls city” to “Sioux Falls” if the gazetteer is being formal.

An empty list simply gives the slot back to the weather stations, which is what the rail did before this tab existed.

A joke a day for /stream/dadjokes.html. Each row is the date it runs and the joke itself; the page shows whichever one matches today.

A day with nothing set shows nothing at all. The slide declines its turn rather than going up empty, so there is no harm in leaving gaps — and no harm in the list running out, which simply means the slide stops appearing until it is filled again.

The punchline is optional and is drawn on its own line, in the accent colour, under the setup. Splitting them gives the eye a beat before the answer, which reads better from across a room than one long line. Put everything in the setup and leave the punchline empty for a one-liner.

To put it on air, add a slide on the Main Stage tab with a URL of /stream/dadjokes.html. It takes ?bg= the same way the forecast and station pages do — /stream/dadjokes.html?bg=02 pins the backdrop, and leaving it off picks one at random each turn.

Files in /stream/railad/. Tick the stage views an advert should run against — leave all unticked and it runs against every view.

Which set the ordinary rotation draws from. Warning Mode already has its own set — any track whose filename ends - Storm — and a season works exactly the same way, so there is one naming rule rather than one per occasion.

Ordinary plays the untagged tracks. Pick a season and it plays the ones ending in that word instead: Sleigh Ride - Christmas.mp3, Toccata - Halloween.mp3. Warning Mode is unaffected either way — a storm sounds like a storm in December.

Takes effect on the next track, not the one playing — cutting a song off mid-bar to start a carol would be worse than waiting three minutes for one. If no files are found for the season, the ordinary set keeps playing rather than the channel going quiet.

Saved notes

The little map in the bottom corner of the stage, on the quiet days. It cycles through these framings while the rundown steps through what is coming up, and it goes away entirely the moment anything is warned — the alert window takes that corner, and a warning has the better claim on it.

Each one is map parameters, exactly as a slide's are, and the tag is what the little blue slab in the corner reads.

The hold below is worth more than it looks. Every turn loads a whole map document from scratch, the same as a stage slide does, so at thirty seconds this panel starts a fresh map twice a minute all day — competing with whatever the stage is trying to load at the time. If slides are overrunning their time, raising this to two or three minutes cuts that background load by four to six times, and the corner simply changes less often.

Lightning is deliberately left off these framings, unlike the stage’s local radars. Each lightning-enabled frame pulls about 1.2 MB of satellite data and decodes it on the same thread everything else is drawn on; at 468 px across, a scatter of strike icons is texture rather than information. Adding lightning to a framing’s options here will work, but it is paid for on every turn.

Switch them all off, or delete them all, and the corner shows the stories panel instead of a map. That is a reasonable way to run it — the rundown is the more useful thing on a quiet day, and the stage is already a radar half the time.