Edmonton Daily Brief · Sources
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The aurora block on the now dial (pipeline/sources/aurora.py): the highest Kp NOAA forecasts for tonight in Edmonton, with the 3-hour slots behind it, observed, estimated and predicted as NOAA labels them. Kp is a planetary forecast of geomagnetic activity, not of visibility: the dial says "NOAA forecasts", never that aurora will be seen.
The JSON changed shape before 2026-10-23: it was a header row followed by arrays and is now a list of objects. The parser reads keys by name, never position, and a row whose kp is outside 0-9 is dropped (a value present and false becomes absent). An absent forecast is "unknown" on the page, never "quiet". Related products, not read: 3-day-geomag-forecast.txt (storm probabilities by day), 27-day-outlook.txt (weekly; disagrees with the 3-day product for overlapping days, so the two are never mixed), ovation_aurora_latest.json (a 30-90 minute nowcast, 919 KB). NOAA removed its experimental aurora "viewline" in May 2026, so no "visible from here" line is stated anywhere.
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Alberta mode is a guy from Edmonton commenting on the news, and the guy is a machine. One or two lines an item — what somebody who has lived here his whole life would say reading it out to his mates.
It is not the story. The headline above each comment is the real one, the source link below it goes to the real reporting, and the plain edition is one click away. He is not summarising anything and he is not a reporter; he is the guy at the shop with an opinion about it.
He swears when a sentence wants it. He is rude about council, developers, the province, the weather, the roads and the Oilers, and never about the people in the story. He holds about a dozen opinions that contradict each other and he is fine with that.
Some of it will sit wrong anyway. When it does, that is on us and we would rather hear it than not: [email protected], and we will pull the line.
Two things get no comment at all, and they are not negotiable: anyone charged or before a court, who has a trial coming and is entitled to have us stay out of it, and a suicide. Anything you need to ACT on — a tip line, an advisory, an evacuation — keeps its full text underneath the comment, because a phone number does not go behind a joke.
The plain edition is the record, and it is the default. It is one click away and it is where you should check anything before you act on it.