The new Washington Post Weather website

We are thrilled to unveil the brand new Washington Post Weather website (washingtonpost.com/weather). Designed to be useful, dynamic, interactive and entertaining, we hope to bring you the most compelling weather content for the D.C. metro region and beyond.

Unlike previous versions of the Washington Post weather website and many weather websites elsewhere, this page will be curated each day by weather professionals rather than solely by a computer. In this case, the Capital Weather Gang is your website host.

Let me walk you through some of the features, starting from the top:

*Seven day and hourly forecasts: We've developed a simple interface to quickly get a seven day forecast for any zipcode or city, state search. We also include a tab to get the hourly forecast for the next 24 hours. These forecasts originate from National Weather Service data. Coming soon: the ability to search international locations as well.

*Capital Weather Gang gateway: Here we include summary text from the latest CWG forecast as well as links to recent CWG posts, features, and tools. This gateway will be updated daily.

*Weather Wall: This is the "heart" of the page with a number of different views for accessing radar and satellite imagery, current weather conditions, a live view of the National Mall, and much more. Several of these views are interactive allowing you to pan and zoom, and add and subtract layers. Some of the views on this wall will change according to season. For example, right now we feature a "Snow/ski" view which provides access to ski resort information and snow conditions, a snow cover overlay, snow potential overlays and more. During tropical season, we'll add interactive hurricane tracking. Finally, in time, we plan to integrate additional maps, multimedia and imagery into this wall. Click on the "i" icon in the upper right hand corner of the wall to learn more about using the interactive maps (or iMAPs). Be patient in allowing the interactive maps to load (they use Flash).

*Weather on Twitter: In this area, we've aggregated some of the best local and national weather Twitter feeds so you can keep your hands on the pulse of the weather world. Some of the Twitter feeds are from big weather companies like The Weather Channel and AccuWeather; others are personalities such as Doug Hill, Topper Shutt and Jim Cantore. CWG's Twitter feed is also integrated into this. The tweets in this area will change constantly.

*Featured Comments: Here we highlight some of the most interesting, insightful, and/or entertaining comments from Capital Weather Gang readers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans. We'll update this every day or so.

*D.C. Area Weather Meters: This is a mix of health and lifestyle indices to help you judge how the weather will make you look and/or feel when you head out. Some of these originate from government agencies, like the UV and Air Quality Index. Others were developed by the Capital Weather Gang, such as the Golf Comfort Index and Hair Quality Index. We'll be developing more of these over time. Feel free to comment with your requests for meters.

*The Nation's Weather: This is a daily summary of weather across the U.S. from Weather Underground via the Associated Press.

*Weather News: Here we aggregate weather and climate news stories making headlines from newspapers and blogs from the around the world.

*D.C. Area Almanac: Access the averages and records for our three local airports for any day of the year.

*Moon Phase: A graphic representation of the current moon phase.

*Today in Weather History: Each day, we'll provide a snippet about some major weather event or climate factoid from D.C.'s weather past.

*Watches and Warnings: Here all active watches and warnings for the D.C. area will appear. Click on any advisory, and the advisory text from the National Weather Service will appear in a pop-up window.

In addition to all of these features, on the right side of the page underneath the advertisement, we provide many ways for you to stay connected with Washington Post Weather and the Capital Weather Gang through social media and e-mail updates.

Over time, we plan to continue adding features to enhance your weather experience. We view this as a first step in building a next generation weather page. We welcome and encourage your comments and feedback.