Brain Candy #75 - How's the Weather on the Web? - Part 2

In the previous column, I talked about U.S. government weather sites. In this one, I'll talk about a few private, educational, and commercial sites. Most of these sites are full of links that you can use to make side trips to other weather resources that might interest you.

When I want a quick forecast, I visit www.wunderground.com - the Weather Underground. Specifically, I have a link on my personal portal to www.wunderground.com/US/OH/Akron.html. When I click on the link, I get Akron's weather for the next week, small icons I can click to access local and regional radars, weather alerts, other weather info, and unfortunately, lots of ads. This is a common feature of the free commercial weather sites; it's how they pay their bills. At the Weather Underground, you can spend $5 a year to avoid the ads and get a few extra features. I haven't, although it might be worth it if ads annoy you. There are quite a number of other sites like it - I favor it because it tends to be fast, and I've used it for quite some time. Another site that is similar is www.weather.com - the Weather Channel's website. I think the ads are even more aggressive there, but it provides some different information than what you'll find at the Weather Underground site.

One site that really interested me is "Storm Track Climatology" at www.met.fsu.edu/Grads/dmargo/storm_track_index.html. This site documents 19 common weather patterns that occur in the continential United States. They are shown on a US map - clicking on one brings up a moderately technical description of that pattern, but it isn't incomprehensible. For instance, if you click on #13, you find that it describes "Panhandle Hook (B) Storms," and includes where and when the pattern tends to begin, how rapidly it moves and how long it lasts, its effects on regional weather and if appropriate, historical examples of that type of weather pattern. Panhandle Hook (B) storms are often severe - two examples given include the early April, 1974 "Super Breakout," which resulted in 148 tornadoes, including the Xenia tornado and the November 10, 1975 storm that contributed to the sinking of the "Edmund Fitzgerald." This site provides very interesting info about recurring weather patterns and is worth serious study by weather fans.

Tornadoes are Nature's most violent weather phenomena. Although much more limited in size than hurricanes, the wind speeds of even average-strength tornadoes are higher than those of the strongest hurricanes. One of the best sites for tornado information is the Tornado Project Online, at www.tornadoproject.com. The project director, Tom Grazulis, is the author of the classic "Significant Tornadoes - 1680 - 1991," a catalogue of every major tornado that has occurred in the United States in the last 300+ years. The site offers many articles on tornado themes, including safety, myths, FAQs and recent tornadoes. A list of all significant tornadoes since 1950 in the United States has recently been made available, and will expand to include older tornadoes in the future.

If you want a site that has a lot of links to help you learn about weather, visit meterologist Jeff Haby's site, www.theweatherprediction.com. I've only been able to do a superficial review of this deep site, but it looks like it is a very useful resource for learning about weather, especially about forecasting. Since most weather sites specialize in displaying data, but don't deal much in how to interpret it, this site fills a gap in on-line weather literature.

The Midwestern Regional Climate Center website can be found at mcc.sws.uiuc.edu. My interests in this site were in the historical information it provided. I found some very interesting information on the May 4, 2003 tornadoes that struck the Central Plains and Midwest. I grew up in Northwest Missouri, and know the area where these storms struck very well. This is one of the better collections of tornado information on a single storm that I've seen. Several other storms of the last few years are also documented at this site.

One last site I'll mention is that of Weatherwise magazine at www.weather-wise.org. This web site seems to be in development; many features are "coming soon." I once subscribed to Weatherwise and can attest to the quality of its articles. If you like weather, you might want to keep an eye on this site, since I expect that it will evolve into quite an interesting and useful resourse in the months to come.