RE: A website for you weather junkies

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
  • Hope everyone has a wonderful and warm Thanksgiving!
  • Super Cedar firestarters 30% discount Use code Hearth2024 Click here
Status
Not open for further replies.

firefighterjake

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Jul 22, 2008
19,588
Unity/Bangor, Maine
http://www.theweatherwiz.com/

Run by Jim Witt . . . a fellow out of NY who does the weather forecast for a local radio station up here. Honestly, he and his crew often nail the weather forecast pretty accurately without a lot of the Panic Center hype from the local TV weather guessers.

Pretty neat . . . plug in the state and city and the date and it gives you that date's predicted forecast along with the week's forecast.
 
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for non-urban areas, at least those out west. Using the form on the main page, when I pick the closest town listed for my area of Montana it gives me the McLean, VA forecast (which would have been handy when I still lived in the D.C. area, but is useless here). I suspect it's east-coast centric.
 
Weatherbug and Weather Underground + the pre-loaded weather that comes on the iPhone for me.
 
I use noaa.gov
 
We're lucky to have a very active University of Washington meteorology prof. that really gets involved with forecasting. Cliff Mass is pretty popular on the local PBS radio shows and has a book out about our very flukey weather here:

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/cliff.php?nav=mass_home

PS: Want to see some fantastic things that happen when weather systems come in and the conditions are right? Check out these shots of the lenticular clouds forming off of Mt. Ranier from a few days ago:

http://www.komonews.com/weather/blog/35631614.html
 
InTheRockies said:
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for non-urban areas, at least those out west. Using the form on the main page, when I pick the closest town listed for my area of Montana it gives me the McLean, VA forecast (which would have been handy when I still lived in the D.C. area, but is useless here). I suspect it's east-coast centric.

It's a long range forecast, you get redirected to national weather service (with mclean as the default) when you select a date less than 10 days
 
Firefighter Jake,

I live in Jersey and snowboard in the Mad River Valley VT. 6 hour drive sometimes, I must be crazy. Anyway, before I make the drive I check every weather resource I can for the weather report. Comparing, contrasting, and deciphering all the various forecasts to make my travel decision. Thanks for the additional data point.
 
Now I'm not saying it was all of you hearth.com members . . . but interestingly enough the guy who runs that website (Jim Witt) mentioned this morning on the radio that yesterday (the day I posted the link here and at a couple other sites) that particular website topped out with over 500 views of the site (I assume at the same time) for the first time . . . maybe it was just coincidental???
 
All weather info starts and ends here...especially since I think all 5 of you crashed that site...

http://www.noaa.gov/

About as accurate as you get with more maps and info above and beyond what you need.

Learn some about the jet stream too
(broken link removed)

and then use this site...
http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html

The issue is that weather is not very predictable, as much as most would like it to be. The best ammunition is up to date information.
 
I've just been using you folks to keep me up to date on what's happening out there. Best up to date reporting I've found. ;-)
 
Weatherbug wants to load a program on your computer and I already have enough junk running in the background and wasting bandwidth. Weather Underground is my favorite as it allows you to jack right into all the radar and other resources of the NWS and NOAA. They have all kinds of cool features and for $5 a year, no advertising. Our pool club uses it for lightning strike data from StrikeStar superimposed right over the real time radar. Check it out:

http://www.wunderground.com/radar/help.asp#lightning

It is still experimental and has to be enabled on the radar page, but is really cool to watch thunderstorms roll in.

Chris
 
Status
Not open for further replies.