WetSock gets its 1990s weather icon working again by replacing a dead feed
A fresh archive bundle revisits a repair Opsbro documented in 2021, with a modern Windows modification and a forecast feature still missing.
WetSock could still draw its little weather interface. The internet it expected to find had moved out. A 1990s Windows utility had become a perfectly serviceable sign pointing at an empty lot.
Opsbro’s repair account starts with a Windows 98 virtual machine and an old favorite from a 1997 PC. WetSocks, as the post calls it, fetched weather into the system tray. When Opsbro revisited it, the NOAA service it queried was gone.
The replacement data already existed. The awkward part was persuading the old executable to accept it. Opsbro watched DNS requests, redirected the application toward an IIS server, and inspected what it asked for there. The requests named mgetmetar.pl and mgettaf.pl under /cgi-bin/, with an airport code in the query.
That supplied the address and the order, but the kitchen had lost the recipe. WetSock expected a particular response, and a modern weather report delivered in the wrong wrapper would still leave it hungry.
An archived request for Los Angeles supplied an example of the page the program understood. Opsbro recreated that presentation and put fresh weather data into it. Opsbro notes that tracing the plain-HTTP traffic was easier before SSL; the application could fetch and decode reports again, while a PowerShell script generated the page. The account ends with a proper public web service still on the to-do list. Opsbro calls the script-based arrangement “cheating a little.”
The November 2 archive upload packages a different delivery mechanism: the program alongside a Windhawk modification that redirects it toward another METAR site. Its description points back to Opsbro’s work. The archive upload is new; the underlying revival effort reaches back to 2021.
The uploader reports that current weather and periodic updates work, with the 24-hour forecast excluded. That is the uploader’s compatibility report, rather than an independent test of the bundle. Anyone expecting a complete restoration should keep that missing feature in view before spending an afternoon on the installation.
There’s something appealing about rescuing exactly the program somebody wanted. A weather icon doesn’t need a new social feed or a redesigned dashboard to regain its purpose. It needs a weather report it can understand. That limited goal also makes the remaining defect easier to describe: current conditions have come back, and the forecast hasn’t.
Future revivals could preserve these small response formats alongside the binaries. An installer alone cannot reproduce a service that disappeared years earlier. For WetSock, the next useful evidence would be a documented fix for that forecast, plus the exact configurations on which it works.