WOW is the Met Office’s Weather Observations Website, designed for members of the general public to share and visualise their weather observations and weather impact reports.
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable.Where services are delivered on the Internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device.These include small files known as 'cookies' or 'local storage'.
These pieces of information are used to improve services for you.
You can turn cookies off, however due to their role of enhancing or enabling usability and site processes, disabling cookies may prevent you from being able to use certain parts of this website.
You are asked to set your cookie preferences when you first visit the website on a new device or browser.You can change your preferences at any time.
Review or update your cookie preferencesThese are functional cookies stored directly by WOW and the Met Office. These cookies enable us to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times. They also recognise that you may have already given a username and password so you don’t need to do it again for every web page requested. They store your other preferences, such as what is displayed on the WOW map. Analytics are used to optimise services. These cookies generally expire when you close the browser or log out of WOW. You can set your browser to block these, but some parts of our site will not work as you would expect.
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| Dplb | A number, used to manage sign on to Met Office services | End of session |
| Dpsso | Random letter and numbers, used to manage sign on to Met Office services | End of Session |
| .AspNet.ApplicationCookie | Random letters and numbers, used to identify user sessions. | When user logs out |
| ASP.NET_SessionId | Random letters and numbers, used to identify the user sessions. | End of session |
| [UserId]_cookies_ | TRUE/FALSE, stores user cookie preferences. | End of Session |
| [UserId]_lat_ | Latitude (location) | End of Session |
| [UserId]_lng_ | Longitude (location) | End of Session |
| [UserId]_mapImpactsFilterTags_ | Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId][UserId]_mapLayer_ | Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_mapPhotosFilterTags_ | Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_notification__-xxxxxxxxx | This value is created by the WOW Website (JavaScript) and is used to show banner notifications. The code sets this cookie with an expiration time of one week and the value is either True or False. | 1 week |
| [UserId]_showDcnnData_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showGroupSites_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showOfficialData_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showPrivateGroupSites_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showPublicGroupSites_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showRegisteredSites_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showSchoolSites_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_showWowData_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_timePointPicker_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
| [UserId]_zoom_ | TRUE/FALSE Stores user map preferences | End of Session |
WOW is built on the Microsoft Azure Cloud, and this service stores some functional cookies on WOW:
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| TiPMix | Testing in production, required for EpiServer release process. Used for load balancing. | End of session |
| x-ms-routing-name | The string x-ms-routing-name specifies the production slot. Once the client browser accesses the link, it redirected to the production slot, and every subsequent request will contain the x-ms-routing-name cookie that pins the session to the production slot. | End of session |
WOW and the Met Office use various analytics to understand how many people are using the website, so we can optimise the service.
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| ai_session | Random letters and numbers. Unique anonymous session identifier. (Azure Application Insights) | End of session |
| ai_user | Random letter and numbers. Unique user identifier cookie enabling counting of the number of users accessing the application over time. (Azure Application Insights) | 1 year |
| _ga | Analytics session ID storage. (Google) | 2 years |
| _gat | A Number. Used to throttle request rate. (Google) | 1 minute |
| _gid | Analytics session ID storage. (Google) | 1 day |
| WT_FPC | Cookie set by WebTrends analytics service, used to track and report on visitor behaviour on a site for performance improvement. (webtrends) | 2 years |
The underlying WOW map is provided by Mapbox, who also store a number of cookies:
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| _fbp | Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products from third party advertisers. (Facebook via. mapbox) | 2 years |
| _ga | Google analytics session ID storage. (Google Via Mapbox) | 2 years |
| _ga | Random letters and numbers. Count how many people visit a certain site by tracking if you have visited before. (Atlassian Jira Servicedesk via Mapbox) | 1 year |
| _mkto_trk | This cookie is associated with an email marketing service provided by Marketo. This tracking cookie allows a website to link visitor behaviour to the recipient of an email marketing campaign, to measure campaign effectiveness. (Mapbox) | 2 years |
