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How to do your own weather forecasts (part 2).

Introduction (continued).

The Weather and Climate is affecting many people and their activities. Weather forecasts are extremely important to the offshore oil business, shipping and fishermen, but they rely not much by the CNN type of forecasts, but have their own sources for quality weather forecasts. Some of these are commercial and not open to the public and are highly specialized. Especially is this true for the offshore oil business, which needs special forecasts tailored to them. In sum there are so many different interests regarding the weather and it is not possible for the media to address all these different interests. There are exceptions to this, but in general we are more or less stuck to use these time limited, broad and fuzzy weather forecasts mentioned above. But, how about the rest of us? It is important for almost all people, like small craft mariners, mountaineers, golfers, sportspersons, and most of people doing outside activities in general, for being able to either get better and more detailed weather forecasts or being able to doing their own. That is what this article series will focus around.

Learning about the weather systems and making your own forecasts does not conflict with the media’s forecasts at all. In fact you will understand these forecasts better. Then supply these with your own observations and you will be able to make your own more accurate forecasts and to time these of when important weather events will happen (delayed or not), or if they are going to happen at all. When you blend in your own observations with the media forecast you could get the best of both worlds. If you are out in the nature somewhere, unable to get the media’s forecast, your own observations may making you to seek shelter in time before heavy rain sets in etc. In some cases you may even rescue your life some day, if you just knew what to look out for. Very often, people do not know this and this causes catastrophes like it just did in Burma (Myanmar). It is sad but I believe many of those people could be saved, if they just understood the danger signs from the cyclone Nargis upfront. The same can be said for many Americans which dies each year because of their lack of understanding the visible danger signs when a hurricanes are approaching or when a strong thunderstorms and possible tornadoes is likely to show up. Some of the casualties will always unavoidable, but many could be rescued if they just knew what to look for.

Weather, a fascinating and often powerful, severe force are continuing to affect us in many ways. Also being able to forecast their own weather can be a rewarding and very exciting hobby for weather interested people. Yes, everyone can do it, as you don’t need a scientific degree to learn some useful weather forecasting tricks by your self. Weather forecasting starts with observation of the current weather, then taking some logical steps for making the probability of an accurate weather forecast as high as possible. One other point noting is that it is not just the upcoming weather itself, which may be of importance, but the timing of WHEN a weather event is most likely to happen. Also local variations can make all the difference if a storm will strike you or not. The more successful you become forecasting your own weather, the more interesting and rewarding it gets. The recipe for this is learning and practicing what you learn in real life. As mentioned before, the best way of learning predicting the weather is to predict it.

The most obvious things we can start to observe are the clouds and the wind. If you have sunny weather and then you observe clouds are starting to coming in at the horizon, it can have different meanings. It can be just afternoon fair weather clouds or it can be the outside or the edge of nasty front coming in. Before I go into more detail about this, it is nice to know that the clouds are often following a relatively fixed visible pattern which makes is possible for the knowledgeable individual to understand what is going on and predict what is going to happen next. These observations together with wind observations, temperature changes and barometer changes make it possible to do very good local forecasts.

This rounds up my second article in a series of many, regarding learning about the weather and doing your own weather forecasts. In my next and 3’rd article we will start digging down in all this.

From the wxdude at www.metar.no