Behind the Website.

You hear sirens in town. You wonder what's happening. We wondered: could technology help answer that question without making everyone listen to a scanner all day?

The idea began when Scott tried a phone app that was supposed to transcribe police and fire radio traffic in real time. Unfortunately, it didn't do a very good job. The conversations came through as garbled words, misunderstood locations and half-finished sentences.

Scott tried to improve the transcription himself. That didn't solve the bigger problem: even a perfect word-for-word transcript wouldn't necessarily tell a listener what was going on.

That question became the inspiration for the NewingtonWeather Scanner Summary Service. With the help of AI and a lot of local knowledge, Scott built a system that listens for Newington police, fire and EMS radio traffic and turns meaningful calls into short, readable updates.

Here's the simple version

Teaching AI a little about Newington

The hard part wasn't just recognizing words. Dispatchers use radio codes, shorthand and local place names that aren't always familiar to a general-purpose AI system. Scott spent considerable time refining how the service understands those details and decides which transmissions belong to the same incident.

We continue to fine-tune the system as new situations arise. We believe this is an unusual approach for a community weather website, although we can't verify that it was the first of its kind.

Curious about what's happening around town? Stop by the scanner page. And if you're a tech enthusiast who enjoys looking under the hood, we've also written a more detailed explanation of the system.

If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, you probably remember checking The Weather Channel for its famous Weather on the 8s local forecast. The blocky graphics and mellow background music were part of the charm.

While looking for fun new features to add to NewingtonWeather.com, Scott discovered WeatherStar 4000+, an emulator that recreates the look and feel of those classic local forecasts.

Of course, he had to try it.

Scott installed it, customized it for Newington and added it to the website. It's been a favorite feature for years. More recently, he upgraded the display to better fill modern 16:9 HD screens and gathered more than 100 classic-style smooth jazz tracks to recreate the soundtrack many of us remember.

Your own little Weather Channel time machine

You can watch WeatherStar 4000+ right on NewingtonWeather.com. But here's a bonus: if you're comfortable setting up a media player, you can enjoy the continuous weather presentation on a computer, television or streaming device, too.

Apps such as VLC can open a network stream on a PC or compatible TV device. Some IPTV-style players, such as TiviMate, may also be able to load our playlist.

Want to give it a try?

You'll need a media player that supports HLS streams. Open its network stream feature and paste the first URL below.

We can't provide individual setup support for every device or app, but if you enjoy tinkering with technology, it's a fun project to try.

Settle in, turn up the jazz, and enjoy a little Weather on the 8s nostalgia, courtesy of your friends at NewingtonWeather.com.

Sometimes a little gift leads to something much bigger than anyone expected. For NewingtonWeather.COM, it all started with a birthday surprise from Eva.

A birthday gift, a weather station and a website

Back in 2012, Eva surprised Scott with a Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station for his birthday. At the time, the setup cost nearly $2,500, and Scott was understandably proud of his new piece of weather technology.

There was just one problem: Scott spent so much time working at his office in Hartford that he couldn't always see what the weather was doing back at home in Newington. He wanted a way to check his own station from anywhere.

That simple idea led to the launch of the website we now know as NewingtonWeather.COM. The original site wasn't particularly glamorous. It was basic, a little hard on the eyes and packed with numbers. But it did exactly what Scott needed: it gave him detailed, up-to-date weather conditions from home while he was at work.

And that was only the beginning.

The sound of a scanner was part of growing up

Scott grew up in a family connected to police, fire and emergency medical services. A police scanner was almost always playing somewhere in the house. The voices, the dispatches and the familiar radio chatter became part of everyday life.

After moving to Newington, Scott bought a scanner capable of following the town's trunked radio system, a technology that required specialized equipment. At the time, a capable scanner could cost around $300.

Scott wanted to hear that scanner no matter where he happened to be. So he began streaming its audio over the internet to the service that is now called Broadcastify. Suddenly, he could listen from work, from his phone or while traveling. Better still, so could anyone else.

As smartphones became common and scanner-listening apps grew in popularity, more and more people discovered the Newington Police, Fire and EMS feed. What started as a personal convenience had become a community service.

February 15, 2025: Newington goes digital

Radio systems don't last forever. Keeping older analog equipment operating had become expensive, and replacement parts were increasingly difficult to find. On February 15, 2025, Newington moved from its old analog system to the State of Connecticut's CLMRN, the Connecticut Land Mobile Radio Network, a digital radio system.

That change meant an old analog scanner could no longer receive the town's calls the way it had before. Scott knew that many people listened to his feed and some relied on it to stay informed. So he purchased a Uniden SDS200 digital scanner and had it ready for the transition.

With digital scanners selling for roughly $750, Scott was especially pleased that local listeners could keep hearing the feed for free, without buying expensive new equipment themselves.

One scanner is good. A backup is better.

After the digital conversion, Scott began thinking about what would happen if his main scanner failed. The answer was to build a second receiver system using an older MacBook Pro, several low-cost software-defined radio (SDR) receivers and a program called SDRTrunk.

The backup was configured to receive the digital network independently and take over if the primary scanner ran into trouble. Scott also uses SDRTrunk to send radio calls received from the CLMRN system to Broadcastify Calls, which lets listeners explore individual transmissions.

Today the project contributes to Broadcastify in two ways: through the familiar live Newington Police, Fire and EMS feed and through the separate Broadcastify Calls service.

2014: What's Happening in Newington joins the story

On September 11, 2014, Scott started the Facebook group What's Happening in Newington, often called WHIN. It was another way to help neighbors find out what was happening around them.

The group grew into a large, active community built around Newington. Its moderators keep the focus local: town events, lost pets, yard sales, community notices and the other small but meaningful things that matter to residents.

Scott says WHIN was recognized among Facebook's leading community groups, and that his community-management work led to participation in Facebook Power Admins and the Facebook Admins Product Council. To him, those experiences are ultimately about one thing: making information easier for neighbors to share.

A new look, and new reasons to visit

After years with essentially the same website, Scott decided it was time for a major refresh. With help from ChatGPT, he redesigned NewingtonWeather.COM to make it easier to use and more inviting to explore.

Once the new design took shape, the question changed from “How can we improve the weather site?” to “What else would be useful to the people of Newington?”

Those are just a few of the ideas. Scott keeps experimenting with ways to combine useful technology with neighborhood information, always looking for the next feature that might help somebody.

Why do all of this?

With Eva's support, Scott gets to do something he genuinely enjoys: work with his gadgets, solve technical puzzles and share the results with the community. He believes that people who understand what's happening around them are better informed and can make better decisions for themselves and their families.

The weather information, scanner feed, community features and WHIN group are offered free of charge. The goal isn't to sell anyone a subscription or put useful local information behind a paywall. The website does use ordinary traffic-measurement services, but its purpose remains to inform, not to sell.

Whether you've lived in Newington all your life, just moved here or simply want to know what that siren was, you're welcome to stop by. Scott doesn't need to know who you are. He's simply glad you're here.

From a birthday weather station to a growing collection of community resources, NewingtonWeather.COM has always been about sharing what Scott loves with the town he calls home.

Lead image: Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station, photographed by Michael L. Umbricht / Ladd Observatory, via Wikimedia Commons (GFDL). Photos are illustrative and do not depict Scott's actual equipment.