Cool Weather Tools

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If you wanted to prove to someone that it really was as cold or hot as you say there are only a few places you can go to get actual NWS certified observations. Same goes for putting together a forecast. You want the actual surface observation for the beginning time of your forecast. Sure there is always the surface plots but, sometimes picking out your station can be difficult, and you need to know what all the weather symbols and numbers mean.

JAVA is the best surface plot I have ever seen. It has the same thing as a surface plot but you can run your mouse over it to see what the observation at each station is. It has options to display the forecast also (TAF) but all of this is in code, so you need to know how to read it.

If you know your station ICAO (four letter airport code), you can plug it into some other online tools. UCAR has a good one and so does NOAA. With these tools you can get the observation translated. A really fun one I found is Weatherbug's interactive maps. It is awesome!

I have a lot of fun looking at the webcams and seeing the weather. They only problem is the lack of information. Don't get me wrong, they give what most people want, but if you want all that was observed you have to go elsewhere.

This is the same with most online places and even weather forecasts from places such as weather.com, they give you what most of the public wants. Which is great, but the average person doesn't realize what quality forecasts are out there.

I picked up a copy of python for dummies and wrote a program that will decode METAR's. It is not the coolest thing in the world but it decodes the observation, and refreshes itself every two minutes. I hooked it up so you can use it as a google gadget. Now I realize what goes into these kinds of programs and you need to have a lot of money and good programers to get any better than these tools. I love the google gadgets tho. I wish someone would make a better google gadget than mine. I think the google homepage gadgets are one of the best things since sliced bread. Add my gadget and try it out, or you can just use it below. If you don't know your station identifier it has a button so you can look it up. You could also just use KCLE for Cleveland to try it out.

Let me know if you know of any other fun or cool tools.

UPPERWEATHER.COM -Meteorological Musings

Cool Weather Tools

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