NOAA tabular forecast...a nice tool for prediction

[genepires]

a friend, Curt, showed me a sweet weather prediction tool. It is a feature of the NOAA pinpoint forecast. On the bottom right of the page is a click for Weather Table Interface. It breaks down the forecast into daily quarters with pretty relevant indicators. One such nice info is the predicted amount of rainfall for that 6 hr period. In the winter, predicted snowfall would be nice. Maybe even expected temps on certain aspects of mountains could predict wet slides.

 

So today, the general forecast looked crappy. But the tabular forecast would have shown that 5/100" of rain would fall, which is actually pretty nice for certain activities. oh well.

 

here is the tabular forecast for index crag.

 

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/forecast/wxtables/index.php?lat=47.82422&lon=-121.54999

 

check it out and see if it works for you.

[mthorman]

Yea I really like NOAA and all of the different features. The other two links I use quite a bit are the "Forecast Discussion" (found on the right side bar just below the map), and the "Hourly Weather Graph" (found near the Weather Table interface link). I like the forecast discussion because it is much more detailed information and talks about different prediction models for long range. And the hourly graph really helps to see more specifics for certain hours. Combine everything together and you can get a pretty good idea of what is going to happen. Although it is still the weather, and predictions are never certain

[JasonG]

My personal favorite for giving me a sense of the weather: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/gfsinit.html

 

Takes a little getting used to to figure out which products to look at, but I've found it much more useful than point forecasts. You can see the general patterns and extrapolate accordingly.

 

Start with the various 4km Cloud and Precip loops. Good stuff from Dr. Mass's Lab!

[BootsandPants]

I switch between atmos and Weatherspark and they rarely let me down. Weatherspark is pretty slick if you haven't tried it yet. Think of a more user friendly and customizable NOAA graph output with point-click forecasts. You can even get historical summaries (from a few days to a few years) of precip/temp/wind speed and direction etc. which I find really useful for snowpack conditions.

 

Pretty rad.

 

 

 

[JasonG]

Cool, thanks for that link. I hadn't seen it before, but it looks quite useful.

[ZimZam]

and the there's www.mountainweather.com