Weather

General

• NOAA’s Aviation Weather Center where you can find METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, RADAR, and Satellite data
• NOAA’s Aviation Digital Data Service
  • Weather Underground provides basic weather, METARs, and excellent Satellite imagery
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Real-Time Weather Data, complete with RUC, ETA, and GFS model data
  • CA/NV RAWS data: there are lot of little weather observation stations around the state
  • Hollister AWOS

Soaring

• Dr. Jack’s BLIPMAP, never go soaring without it
• BLIPMAP Univiewer a single page interface to many BLIPMAPs

Bay Area

• NWS Area Forecast Discussion: Monterey
• Weather Underground’s Hollister Page
• NWS Monterey
• Hernandez RAWS
• Santa Rita Peak RAWS

Sierras

• Winds Aloft
• NWS Area Forecast Discussion: Reno
• NWS Reno Soaring Forecast
  • Northstar at Tahoe Golf Cam (for a view of the Truckee sky)
  • Jim Herd’s Minden WebCam, aimed in the direction of the airport. [user: GliderPilot, pass: Minden]
• Doug Armstrong’s Minden Soaring Forecast
• Sierra RASP BLIPMAPs

Web Weather Links by Harry Fox, June 24, 2009

National Weather Service Monterey Forecast Page:

http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/forecast.php

This has links to:

Zone forecasts;

Area forecast discussion (”AFD”; has hyperlinks to definitions of terms used).

Along the left edge are links to:

Satellite photos;

Radar imagery.

NWS Graphical Forecast Page:http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/mtr.php

National Weather Service Monterey Aviation Page:http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/aviation.php

Includes links to METARs, TAFs, TWEBs (scroll down for TWEBs).

Unisys Weather Page: http://weather.unisys.com/

Or, to go direct to Medium Range Forecast (GFSx) charts:

http://weather.unisys.com/gfsx/24h/gfsx_4panel_24h.html

Key charts for me are:

SL Pres/Prec = Sea level pressure and precipitation;

1000 mb = Temperature and winds near sea level;

850 mb = Temperature and winds near 5000 feet;

300 mb = Winds near 30,000 feet;

Rel Hum/Show = Relative humidity and Showalter index (thunderstorms likely if negative).

Model Soundings:

Kurt Thams wrote a Google Maps interface to allow you to get a sounding from an arbitrary point by clicking on the map:http://thams.com/flying/skewTmap.html

Dr. Jack Products: www.drjack.info

RUC BLIPMAPs: http://www.drjack.info/BLIP/RUC/CANV/multitime.html

NAM BLIPMAPs: http://www.drjack.info/BLIP/NAM/CANV/index.html

BLIPMAP Univiewer:http://www.drjack.info/BLIP/univiewer.html#GoBlipMapUniviewer

Help page: http://www.drjack.info/BLIP/INFO/help.html. Start on the Help page and explore around.

BLIPSPOTs: http://www.drjack.info/BLIP/RUC/SPOT/index.html

Includes links to forecast soundings for same locations.

Index of RASP BLIPMAPs: http://www.drjack.info/RASP/index.html

Sierra RASP BLIPMAPs:http://www.norcalsoaring.org/BLIP/SIERRA/index.html

Byron - Panoche - Hernandez RASP BLIPMAPs:http://www.norcalsoaring.org/BLIP/BYRON/index.html

Williams RASP BLIPMAPs:http://www.valleysoaring.net/RASP/index.htm

WINDIP wave forecasts: http://www.drjack.info/WINDIP/index.html

Example of successful WINDIP forecast:http://www.drjack.info/twiki/bin/view/BLIPinfo/WINDIPHollisterWavePrediction

Competition for Dr. Jack:

www.xcskies.com

Subscribe to your local soaring newsgroup.

Example: SoarTruckee@YahooGroups.com has daily soaring weather forecasts by Doug Armstrong.

Fire and TFR Information:

http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/nfn.htm

http://www.runwayfinder.com/

http://tfr.faa.gov/tfr2/list.html

Official Briefings:

www.duats.com

www.duat.com