I would like to get the Observatory data every hour they update the forecast.
My one time data extract code is following.
library(RCurl)
web <- getURL
I think the reasonable course of action is to write a script that does all you want to do (downloading data, cleansing, storing, ...) and than use something like:
... to schedule it - meaning to start it at regular intervals instead of having one R session run and waiting all the time via e.g. Sys.sleep(60*60)
.