What are
/r/meteorology's
favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The most popular Products mentioned in /r/meteorology:
The most popular Services mentioned in /r/meteorology:
Weather Underground
Windy
Weatherspark
The Weather Channel
AccuWeather
Dark Sky
Alibris
Amazon Web Services
freeCodeCamp
Codecademy
OpenWeather
The Great Courses
Google Play Books
Docker
The most popular Android Apps mentioned in /r/meteorology:
wX
Windy: wind, waves and hurricanes forecast
RadarScope
NOAA Weather Unofficial
SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free
The most popular reviews in /r/meteorology:
If you want accurate temperatures, use FAA or DOD ASOS stations. Those are guaranteed to be accurate. You might have to learn how to speak METAR, but it's easy after a while.
Use this link to find an observation close to you. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/
I wouldn't trust any other reports unless they came from a reputable source, such as Oklahoma's Mesonet or other educational type sources.
If you're referring to radar for your smartphone/tablet, it's not a free radar program but RadarScope is the best out there by far. I think it's about $9.99 CAD on the app store/Google play. If you live in the states, it's already integrated with the dual polarized radars that are active across the country, so you get reflectivity and velocity products, CC, precipitation depiction, etc., and if you're in Canada, all of Environment Canada's radars are connected to the software. You can also add your spotter network ID into it to show your position via GPS. If you want a quality application, RadarScope is where it's at! You can also subscribe to radarscope pro. It's $~11 CAD/year and you get lightning data, extra frames to playback, etc. I've attached the link to the app below.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.basevelocity.radarscope
The map is just basically just an interpolation between the points, if I remember correctly.
~~If I had to guess the weird reading is probably them doing some sort of calibration on the thermometer at that station, if it's not a broken station.~~ EDIT: It's definitely a broken station. Just look at the history for today: https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KWVROMNE4#history and you'll see that it's glitching to 0 or -52, and the dewpoint is -66 or -40. So definitely a broken station. Plus, it's recording the unphysical combination of a -40 dewpoint and -52 temperature, and the dewpoint can't be greater than the temperature in reality.
it looks like the north Atlantic forecast for Sunday and yes I agree it's an artifact of calculation. Realistically it's a region of light and severely shifting winds.
Hi. The main thing you'll find it useful for is data analysis / manipulation.
I'd say do these, in this order:
The Python course on http://www.codecademy.com to understand the syntax of the language.
Then, try to find an online course on Lynda / YouTube / udemy that's in "Python for data analysis / science". A good GitHub to check out is https://github.com/darothen/climate_data_science , he gave a presentation at AMS last year that was stellar for an introduction.
Then, some good books to check out would be "Python data science handbook", and "data science from scratch".
Those all helped me learn it. Currently don't have internet to check the actual courses I've done. It's a pretty good skill to have on your resume too and useful for graduate studies, but also can help you pivot toward a-whole-nother section of jobs if you decide graduate school isn't for you. All of those resources are what I used during my undergrad to teach myself. I actually pivoted and am working in a completely non-related field doing DS stuff. If you've learned Matlab and some other actual object oriented language, you shouldn't have a tough time.
Thanks for the interesting question, lot of great answers here!
> I had never heard of the 14 day limit before so that's pretty cool!
Now you have everything you need to see through bullshit like this.
Storm prediction center has a lot of great products. I've been taking met classes for four years and still wonder where I can get data half the time. To be more specific, the forecast tools tab has everything you could want. Mesoanalysis for a specific region, upper air maps, and sref model runs
edit: wunderground has nice products too. Here's their surface analysis. https://www.wunderground.com/maps/us/Fronts.html
You could try this desktop site: https://www.windy.com/?40.880,-111.823,5 Or this one is somewhat similar: http://builder.zoomradar.net/zoomradar_weather_map/weather_page.php?key=NBtMX94AyuzcYHF
I hope this helps. That's the best I got unless someone else has anything better.
Edit: Windy has apps just like Weather Underground does. Which you should be able to find on Android or iOS.
For me, this one uses the same weather station as WeatherBug and you can also select other nearby stations.
The linked one is free and there is a Pro version with no ads for $1.99.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstudio.weatherhere.free&hl=en
... about 20nm away ...
As you can see below (if viewing 'now', 7 May 2021 evening) the storm extends far beyond 20 miles, out to about 120 miles over water. "Summer lightning", commonly seen in Florida as distant silent flashes.
https://www.windy.com/distance/25.82,-80.32;24.98,-78.55?radar,25.633,-79.394,7
I had to see if that was a real word. Turns out it's on it's way out. I may just throw it into a few papers.
A great book I read that covered this topic a bit is Storm World by Chris Mooney. He has a whole chapter on what was called the great storm debate between The empirical Redfeild and the theoretical James espy.amazon link to book
As a meteorology major, my partner also struggled to find a gift for me last year. He decided on buying me got me a replica of an old storm glass. They aren’t extremely functional, more like a nerdy decoration. However, I loved mine and keep it on display year round!
Hope that helps!
Maybe a bit boring, but Kenneth Librecht runs a snowflake lab at Caltech and has collected a lot pictures of lab made snowflakes and put them in a book (link).
He also has other books as well (second link)
What you say to this one:
it's on sale right now
Also this:
Are both too casual?
Looking at https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/pa/philadelphia/KPHL/date/2021-11-13
the temperature seems to be rising quiet rapidly on that day. Is there any more info on the location? like cities surrounded by hills/factories or whatever else that could be distinguishing features? This is because wind speed on that time seems not to be too high, but that's ground level wind. How high were you?
You haven't gotten any response here because it depends on so many factors that its impossible to answer in a simple paragraph...
for the time varying aspect, just take a graph at noon on solctice and apply sinus/cosine laws to the amplitude to have the graphs in respect to the time.
you will never find raw data, as the incomming radiation depends on the clouds. Same goes for the outgoing. So you'll have to apply a mean cloud cover etc.
If you did university physics (or related fields), you could read that book, it would have all the answers:
https://www.amazon.ca/First-Course-Atmospheric-Radiation/dp/0972903313
If you didn't do university physics, i'm afraid you might never get your answers.
I get that perspective. But I think it's deceptive because let's be honest - the software engineering standards in the atmospheric science community haven't been that great.
A few academics have rigorously thought through software design in scientific modeling domains, and there's a nice literature on design patterns that you'd kind of take for granted until you actually implement them and realize the value they proffer in terms of extensibility and developer velocity. One of my favorite textbooks to recommend to folks is Damian Rouson's Scientific Software Design: The Object-Oriented Way.
Even simple physics and atmospheric models can greatly benefit from modern engineering principles.
Marcel Minnaert: The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air
This book on meteorological optics details rainbows, halos, black snow, and hundreds of other phenomena...
Wallace and Hobbs is definitely the go-to for most freshman and sophomore-level meteorology classes.
Even had a few upper-level courses that referenced it. Maybe a bit more advanced for what you're looking for, but still is an excellent textbook. Still have mine in my office.
You mean Mesoscale Meteorology and Forecasting by Peter Ray? I don't really mind the age of the book, after all these lectures from 1984 will probably hold their weight, if not they're a window to the past into the field. Thanks for the recommendation!
I checked the Amazon page about it and it looks like they've updated the content recently, sadly I can't preview the book to check it's content, but I'll still get it! Thanks for the recommendation.
Take a look here:
Marcel Minnaert - The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air
Rainbows, mirages, multiple moons, black snow, colored shadows,
iridescent clouds, halos, green surf, and hundreds of other natural
phenomena are clearly and simply explained... A fascinating read...
I agree with bobmooney's comment. I've been using one of these for years. Mine is from Amazon. See link below. This particular rain gauge has a diameter of about 4 inches, I believe. Measures rainfall in hundredths of an inch. Overall, it can hold up to 11 inches of rainfall.
Ground clutter / anomalous propagation
Basically it’s the radar beam being refracted in the atmosphere and hitting the ground.
https://www.wunderground.com/prepare/understanding-radar “Under highly stable atmospheric conditions (typically on calm, clear nights), the radar beam can be refracted almost directly into the ground at some distance from the radar, resulting in an area of intense-looking echoes. This "anomalous propagation " phenomenon (commonly known as AP) is much less common than ground clutter. Certain sites situated at low elevations on coastlines regularly detect "sea return", a phenomenon similar to ground clutter except that the echoes come from ocean waves.”
Hurricanes typically track north-west in the Northern Hemisphere and South-West in the Southern hemisphere (except in the Australian Monsoon region). The reason for this is a combination of the steering flow - responsible for the westerly motion, and the Beta effect which is largely the reason a Hurricane tracks away from the equator. See more here about the Beta effect.
So I'm still not really sure what exactly you are wanting, because daylight intensity isn't something I've ever heard of. Solar radiation is the amount of radiation given off by the sun, measured in W/m(2). It changes based on the season/earth tilt. So does the UV which is on a scale of 1-10. Anyways, scroll down and look at the graphs at the bottom of the page, this is yesterdays graph.
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KFLDAYTO60/graph/2020-01-13/2020-01-13/daily
You can learn the basics with just about any programming language, but eventually you'll will want/need to home in on the sort of work you'd like to accomplish with code--That decision will steer you toward a particular subset of languages and architecture.
In the meantime, for a well-regarded free resource, there's Free Code Camp @ https://www.freecodecamp.org/
There’s an excellent online course through Harvard X: https://pll.harvard.edu/course/backyard-meteorology-science-weather?delta=2
The course is free but you can pay extra for a ‘verified certificate’, for what that’s worth. After completing the course I purchased Professor Huth’s book, which was also a great read: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Art-Finding-Our-Way/dp/0674088077/ref=sr_1_1?crid=295EL1YO0AI8G&keywords=the+lost+art+of+finding+our+way&qid=1643684041&sprefix=Lost+art+finding%2Caps%2C331&sr=8-1
October's record-breaking cold in the West (Utah beat the coldest low in October for the lower 48 and almost beat Alaska) and record-breaking heat in the East.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/October-2019-Month-Extreme-Weather-US
Is it really common for College Station to go through long periods without rain outside of the summer? I lived there for two years and I have distinct memories of both winters being dreary and rainy. Unfortunately this isn't the kind of thing we keep exact statistics on so I can't easily look up the "average number of sunny days in a row", but you can look at Weather Underground's calendar page to look at the weather for previous months and years.
To answer your question, it seems as if there are chances of rain tomorrow and in the middle of next week, so no, there's no big streak of dry days coming up. But that shouldn't be too surprising: rain every 3-4 days is the norm for this time of year, not an unusual anomaly.
TWC purchased Wunderground a while back; the latter is known for its support of user-provided data via PWS (personal weather station) devices.
I like to use the Wunderground apps and websites to compare data from PWS devices with data from the NWS as well as various weather reporting stations. Since PWS devices are market-quality and consumer-operated, they can often be wrong. But there are typically many more of them than there are quality weather reporting stations.
Comparing the data from wundermap, KAXX via the NWS, and data from nearby weather airports at similar elevations, it seems likely that the equipment at KAXX is faulty.
Thanks. I've had a google already but I can't see any with the actual data, just loads of graphs which look nice, but aren't giving me enough data.
For example, WeatherSpark, which has some nice info, will show me a temperature graph with upper and lower ranges, but not the actual data, so I can't see the years when the upper range was hit, and whether that trend has been happening for 5 years, 10 years etc.
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Would be ideal if it had the table of data underneath it.
>Highly unusual for this time
Certainly later than average, but "highly unusual" seems to be overstating it. Chicago's average last snow is March 31st, so we're only a few weeks past that. The record latest snow was May 11, we're almost a month away from that.
Ah, that makes it easier. A cold front is doing some weird things around there, you can still see this on for example Windy, especially more south on the island. It's moving pretty slowly across but carries with it a large wind shift and a lot of oceanic air so that explains the drastic change you saw over quite a short direction.
I think you are talking about the general pattern, and that isn't really my question. I'm talking about the very quick changes (I've experienced 90 degree shifts in 15 minutes)
Here, I've added some drawing This is south of Nova Scotia right now (link to Windy if you see this today) It's not just that the wind is following the depression around, the front is a very sharp change in wind direction even when the front is far away from the actual depression.
Thinking more about it: is the resistance from the cold mass in front of the front providing enough friction for the air to start flowing non-cyclonically but just in a relatively straight line towards the depression?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx
Reccomend this app if you have Android, it may not be the cleanest slick looking, and the UI take some getting used to. I reccomend turning on navigation drawer on main screen in the UI settings. But it's become a one stop shop for a lot of things I want to check out.
Has radar, model runs, sattelite, alerts, just to name some of the features.
Not sure where you are located but this book on weather in North America is a great pocket handbook with basic concepts
You might try https://darksky.net/dev/docs. Dark Sky provides an API that provides a "Time Machine" to access past data which goes back "decades" according to their documentation. You can get a sense of what's available by reading their documentation or by playing around interactively with their Time Machine at https://darksky.net/ (scroll down to the bottom of the page to choose a date). You'll need some programming skills to download the data. Good luck!
I've had my PWS for 6 months and have been loving it. I have the Ambient Weather WS-1001-WIFI OBSERVER and have been pretty impressed with it, so much that I got one for my parents as a gift. It looks like they're out of stock now, but I'd recommend taking a peek at these.
I think it's been pretty darn accurate. Useful? I mean... you don't need one, but I like geeking out so I get a ton of enjoyment out of it. I have it hooked up to WUnderground as well.
Didn't break the bank with it either. Setup was less than $350 after rigging a mount onto my deck. You can also check out r/myweatherstation/ too :)
Looks like a shelf cloud to me, very common with organized thunderstorm complexes. And December through February are the most common months for thunderstorms in Israel.
Best advice I can give is to look constantly at the weather around you in conjunction with keeping a close eye on either earth.nullschool or windy (or both). You'll find that even these models can be wrong, and then you start to ask yourself why would it be wrong? Further, it can give insights on how the atmosphere behaves. From there, you'll be able to hone your skills for assessing synoptic scenarios.
The Great Courses has a pretty good Met 101 adult learning type course. It's getting a little dated at this point, but it's still a good introduction. The price for the standalone course is 200 something, but if you combo it with an extra extreme weather course the cost drops to 70 something. If you look hard enough you can also find a copy to steal on the internet.
Insuggeat you to read this:
I think is the book which uses the most accessible language and for your purposes you can just skip the maths
I randomly stumbled across this app called Wx https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx
it's a very customizable app, no ads or anything of the sort, can be a lot to navigate, it basically just aggregates as many sources of info (mostly US/NAM). But with thd customization you can sort out exactly how you'd like to browse selected info/maps/charts/discussions
>An introduction to dynamic meteorology
That book is still the Kinematics and Dynamics course textbook at my old University, as a junior level course.
Essentials of Meteorology is a college intro book to Meteorology, though it's a bit dated now with technology.
The Meteorology Today book looks good, Amazon's price brings back being poor in college horrors!
Alright, so I just bought this and it is exactly what I was looking for. The book explains the science behind snow flakes/crystals and provides a lot of case studies and photographs. Would definitely recommend if you are still looking for a book about snow. :)
Windy's a completely free app, you can only donate if you want to. I think you mixed up apps.
There is a lot of need for data scientists in the field. Meteorology produces more data than almost any other field. We literally produce more data than we can reasonably distribute.
In addition to the obvious areas of learning basic meteorology, if you want to break into the field from where you are now, I would recommend digging into verification methods and statistical post-processing (calibration)/machine learning. These are going to be the most obvious extensions of the skills you already have. If you're looking for textbooks, try Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences or Statistical Postprocessing of Ensemble Forecasts to start.
Stuart Walker has two books about intuitively predicting local surface winds written for sailors that are excellent. The more recent of the two is called The Sailor's Wind.
You could buy one of the starter college books and work your way through it.
Your dad sounds a lot like myself! I have the same fascination with weather - this book is an oldie but a goodie, I have had a copy since I was a kid, however it’s not a kids book (I’m 30 now) and absolutely love it - it is weather simplified with pictures and explanations for a beginner! Note it is an old book so a few things may be a little out of date (Fujita scale vs enchanted fujita) Weather: Nature Company Guides https://www.amazon.com/dp/0809493748/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_QVUmBbR2XF0WY
Another great gift is a glass barometer, the liquid will go up or down depending on the pressure in the atmosphere - really cool for when storms come In - also looks really neat.
Hope this helps!
I don't have one like that, but I have one of the ones with water and a spout. It's basically a water barometer. It works pretty well and it looks great on the wall.
Ambient Weather BA212 Wall Mounted Weather Station with Thermometer, Hygrometer, and Barometer - Cherry Finish https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GF1WMK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Wu4uybNH3ZBG3
I love my Davis Pro 2 (picture). I'm not sure how well other wx stations do this, but the software and included cable adapter to interface the data onto a computer is ridiculously overpriced and looks like it was designed in the 90s.
There are other pieces of software that I haven't tried yet, but you need to get the Davis one first because the cable adapter is necessary.
dont want to get slammed with math and QG theory?
Weather Analysis by Djuric. Good at providing someone with little met background a solid intro without the thermodynamics, partial derivatives, and general circulation stuff of most intro texts. http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Analysis-Dusan-Djuric/dp/0135011493