These are some links that have been recommended to us by Professor Hupy. Although I haven't looked into them yet, I think they will be extremely useful for my weather briefing, and also for posting maps on my blog! Once I learn more about them, I will post more information about what they are good for!
1. National Weather Service
This website has good radar that will be interesting to look at during warm weather seasons. Very good for looking at thunderstorms!
2. AccuWeather
AccuWeather has really good radar maps. They also are a really good source for the daily weather. If you're interested in just checking out what the temperature is going to be, etc., this is the place to go! They seem to be very accurate, which often is hard to find in weather prediction!
3. Unisys
Unisys is my favorite website to go to for surface data! The maps that show wind direction, etc are really easy to read! It is nice because you can see the wind patterns for the whole country, as well as easily navigate to smaller sections of the country so you can more closely look at what is going on in a specific location! It is also very useful to look at upper air sounding plots
4. NOAA
This website is good for water vapor maps! With a water vapor map you can see how much evaporation is going on and where it is happening and predict where there will be precipitation!
5. Wind Map
I was really excited to learn about this website, as it is now one of my favorite references! It is a great one-stop source to see where high/low pressure systems are developing, how fast wind speeds are, and which direction the winds are coming from. Rather than looking at a surface map, I prefer to use the map because it is in motion and you can visually see how it is moving. Instead of looking at symbols that tell you what is going on, you get to actually see it!
6. The Weather Channel
Although this isn't the most scientific weather site of all of these links, it is very useful when tryign to learn about what is going on weather-wise in other areas of the country! It contains many videos, pictures, and news articles about things such as tornado breakouts, severe weather, and new weather trends that are occurring in different areas of the country! If I see something interesting on say, a surface map, and I want to look into whats going on this is a great website to come find an article and read about it!
One thing I still am looking for is a good website to look at isobars that are higher up because I really want to begin to look at them to predict daily temperatures. I feel that looking at those maps will give me a greater sense of trust than looking at a number on a weather site that I don't know where they got it from.
