Weather forcasting question

[AggieDave 6]

How does a weather man/women/person determine what the wind speed will be for forcasting the next day or days?

I can understand the basics of weather patterns, etc, storm movements, how weather forms, etc, but all I would be able to do is say "the wind will be blowing from X tomorrow" I wouldn't be able to say "it'll be blowing from X at 5-10mph tomorrow."

I'm sure someone here knows, please share the knowledge.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[FLYBERT71 0]

Have you ever seen a weather person get fired for getting the prediction wrong?

"If you have time to panic, you have time to do something more productive."
Josh Whipple 7/15/70-2/10/05

[AggieDave 6]

That's a really good point.

I look at weathermen sort of like baseball players. If a player hits a .300 he's pretty good, that's doing it 30% of the time. So if a weatherman is right 30% of the time, he's probably paid a lot of money.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[tunaplanet 0]

They're not nearly as bad as SOCOM intelligence

Forty-two

[phatcat 0]

They make computer models, take the results and regurgitate it into forecasts. Complex stuff. I've read a few books on weather, mostly flying related, and what I've learned most is an appreciation for how difficult it really is to tell what Mother Nature is going to do next. There's really no simple do-it-yourself way to do it. Call up your local Flight Service Station and get a good weather briefing.

Come to think of it ,I have an uncle that does this thing with his nuts that lets him forecast the weather with dead-on acuarracy, but it's a family secret. You'll have to play with your own nuts.

[slug 1]

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How does a weather man/women/person determine what the wind speed will be for forcasting the next day or days?

I can understand the basics of weather patterns, etc, storm movements, how weather forms, etc, but all I would be able to do is say "the wind will be blowing from X tomorrow" I wouldn't be able to say "it'll be blowing from X at 5-10mph tomorrow.

"I'm sure someone here knows, please share the knowledge.

I'm just guessing but When we lived in missouri we could track the weather reports coming across colorado and kansas and have a chance of guessing when & what the weather was going to be like when the front moved thru our area.

These days with the computers and data base's, Satalite info available to the weather service my guess is the weather people look at their cheat sheet punch all that weather stuff temp. pressure etc into the computer compare it with the historical data and then come up with a WAG of the probability of the weather pattern following it's most probable route.

Like living in tornado alley, tracking hurricans etc. That crap starts somewhere and ends up somewhere else.

I think back in the pre satalite days the pilots would get a weather debrief when they landed and the info would be relayed back to their point of departure with adjustments for changes in stuff that could be actualy measured.

R.I.P.

[nightjumps 1]

I can't answer your question, but I can share something interesting. Oklahoma has THE highest paid meterologists in the nation. There's more than one that make over 300K/annum. Reason being is their ability to predict storms.

Now here's where it gets interesting, They are right on sunshine & rain about 75% of the time. But, there are two of them that when they say there's going to be wind at "X" number of hours tomorrow. Count on it. Freaky.

Some folks who have moved to Oklahoma have thrown the 15 yard penalty for bullshit flag on wind predictions when they hear, "Winds tomorrow will be 14-18 with gusting to 30... They'll be like, "BULLSHIT, how can he predict that!?!?!!?" Everyone just nods their heads and waits.

[fudd 0]

I'd say that they can just look at satelite pictures one hour aparte and calculate how fast its moving. Probably not as easy as it sounds.

What would be fun to learn more about is local weather forecasting by looking at clouds, wind, temperature etc. and beeing able to tell how the weather is going to be the next few hour.

One of the pilots at my dz can give a 20 minute call. It's raining, but by the time the plane gets to altitude a nice hole in the clouds is right over the dz. When people have landed safely it starts to rain again. Freaky...

There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

[BASE813 0]

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What would be fun to learn more about is local weather forecasting by looking at clouds, wind, temperature etc. and beeing able to tell how the weather is going to be the next few hour.

Check out the book "Understanding the sky" by Dennis Pagen.

http://www.ap-store.com/cb900.html

[kallend 1,620]

The artmosphere is divided up into a very large number of small cells, and the behavior of each cell is predicted based on:

its current state (temperature, pressure, moisture content)
the state of its neighbors, and the surface beneath,
heat losses by radiation etc.,
heat input from insolation, etc.


using the laws of physics.

Basically its a very big and very complex physics problem. The reason for lack of accuracy is (1) the current state is poorly known, especially over oceans etc which have few weather reporting facilities, and (2) it's a chaotic system, so small changes in input can lead to large changes in outputs.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.