THE LOCAL LINE

BEHIND THE LOCAL LINE

LOCAL DATA.
CONNECTED.

A little local knowledge, with a new engine behind it. Here’s how Gower Live brings the coast to your screen.

THE NEW SETUP

Built for a quick look.
Ready for a closer one.

The new website replaces WordPress with Astro on Cloudflare Workers. Pages bring together shared readings from a Cloudflare D1 database; camera video travels directly from its provider to your browser.

  1. 01Source observations
  2. 02Scheduled imports
  3. 03Shared data snapshot
  4. 04Your coast, on screen

01 / THE SOURCES

Weather on the ground.

WeatherLink brings in local observations. The homepage uses East Cliff at Pennard; dedicated dashboards also show Mumbles and Llansamlet.

Explore local weather

02 / THE SOURCES

Waves out at sea.

The South Pembrokeshire buoy supplies offshore wave height, period and direction through Cefas WaveNet. These readings describe the buoy location, rather than surf at a particular beach.

See buoy readings

03 / THE SOURCES

Time on the tide.

Swansea tide predictions are combined with Mumbles sunrise and sunset times to show daylight water windows. Predicted height is different from measured water depth.

Check water access

04 / THE SOURCES

A window on Mumbles.

Two views, delivered directly by Ozolio. Bay and Waterfront use their own video proportions, with playback handled by the camera provider.

Watch the bay

FRESH READINGS. LESS REPEATED WORK.

Updated in the background.

Scheduled Workers fetch the feeds once for everyone. A shared snapshot and a short cache help keep pages fast without asking the source for every visit.

While a page is visible, it checks for updates once a minute. Checks pause in a hidden tab and resume when you return.

Weather imports
Every 5 minutes
Buoy imports
Twice an hour
Conditions report
Every hour
Public data cache
Up to 25 seconds

THE TIME ON THE READING MATTERS

Freshness comes from the source.

An import or page refresh never makes an old observation new. Weather readings are marked stale after 15 minutes; buoy and air-quality readings after 90 minutes. Missing readings stay unavailable.

Tides are predictions. The hourly report is a factual summary of the stored data. The experimental Mumbles Downwinder meter uses Pennard gusts, with separate wind-direction, water and daylight checks. None of these replaces checking conditions on the water.

Read the latest report

Content and code are maintained through Git. Data-source attribution is included in the footer.

THE CLOUDFLARE SETUP

Under the Hood.

Two Workers. One shared database. Here’s what does what.

WeatherLink + CefasScheduled WorkerD1 + shared snapshotWebsite WorkerYour browser

01 / THE WEBSITE

Cloudflare Workers

One Worker runs the Astro website, renders pages and serves the data and calendar endpoints. A second Worker handles scheduled imports and the hourly report, independently of visits.

02 / THE READINGS

Cloudflare D1

Both Workers connect to the same SQL database. It holds weather, buoy and air-quality observations, tide predictions, reports and import results. The website reads the shared data; the scheduled Worker updates it.

03 / THE FAST PATH

Snapshots + Cache API

Imports prepare a shared dashboard snapshot, including trends and alert history. Public data responses can be reused for 25 seconds. Snapshots older than ten minutes fall back to the source rows; neither step changes the observation time.

04 / THE PAGE ASSETS

Workers Static Assets

Styles, scripts, logos and illustrations are served as static files. Fingerprinted build assets use long-lived caching; dynamic pages and browser data responses use no-store so a return visit checks for fresh information.

05 / THE SUPPORTING PIECES

KV + domain routing

Workers KV supplies Astro’s session binding; the environmental readings live in D1. Cloudflare connects the website to gowerlive.co.uk and redirects HTTP and www to the HTTPS root domain.

06 / KEEPING TRACK

Job records + recovery

Each import records its outcome in the database, and Worker observability is enabled. D1 Time Travel provides database recovery history. Automated external alerts and offsite backups are still planned.

Video takes a different route.

Ozolio streams and WeatherLink’s embedded dashboards load directly from their providers. They do not pass through our Workers or the shared data cache.