While preparing my last column, “Our Interest in Weather Extends to Apps and Websites,” it became clear that there are many favorite weather apps and sites that people pay attention to. Indeed, you can cover more than a single article can. Here’s a follow-up look at some weather forecasting websites as opposed to first-row coverage on mobile apps like Apple Weather, YR, Weerplaza, Weather Channel, and Weather Network.
As wildfires burned through much of British Columbia and other parts of North America this summer, many of us turned to the Canada website portal for information on wildland fire weather and smoke. I turned to firesmoke.ca. This site provides high-resolution, interactive forecasts of hourly, daily averages, and daily maximum concentrations of ground-level PM2.5 smoke particles (one measure of particle pollution) from wildfires.
Firesmoke.ca was developed by the University of British Columbia’s Weather Forecasting Research Team, which produces research forecasts with support from multiple institutions. Their tools and data are useful to professionals in the air quality, health and safety, emergency management, science and research communities, as well as the general public. Indeed, the maps produced by this site are based on modeling predictions, and actual conditions may differ from predictions. Nevertheless, I myself found it necessary to look at the projections on this site almost once every day during the summer. Images from this site also began appearing on nightly television news segments.
Another website that has become very popular here, especially in the fall when storm season arrives, is Windy.tv, which also operates as Windy.com. The site is feature-rich and provides all kinds of detailed overlays of basic data, surface wind mapping based on modeling derived from the distribution of high and low pressure systems around the world.
For firesmoke.ca, Windy provides forecasts for several days from the current time. It is very interesting to see the current wind conditions in different locations, both in terms of average wind speed and maximum gusts. It will be interesting to see how wind conditions change in the Salish Sea during storms and when and where BC Ferries suspends service.
Some Snowbird readers may have used Windy to follow Hurricane Lydia as it approached Puerto Vallarta. Windy also exists as a mobile app, but it’s especially great on desktop displays. There may be a compromise with the tablet screen.
A variant of Windy is the site earth.nullschool.net, which is a supercomputer-predicted visualization of global weather conditions that is updated every three hours. Although the interface is spartan, this attractive website packs a huge amount of data. Start by clicking on the “Earth” in the bottom left and experiment with the modes and projection options. Drag to rotate the view of the Earth. Scroll or drag with two fingers to zoom in or out.
If you are interested in highly specialized weather data, you may want to peruse spotwx.com. In fact, while I say “highly technical,” Spotwx is actually designed to provide hyperlocal predictions while displaying the data used to arrive at that prediction. It has been.
This is an explanation from the creator of Spotwx, whose day job is working for the Manitoba Wildfire Service. “It is designed as a spot weather forecasting tool. There are many sites, both government and private, that display weather maps from various models. Obtaining one can be a tedious task. Spotwx was created to fill that void.”
We must not forget Environment and Climate Change Canada (search for ECCC). The agency has a multifaceted site whose mission is described through its main page instructions as “protecting and conserving natural heritage, predicting weather, and predicting climate change.” Environmental conditions, prevention and control of pollution, promotion of clean growth, sustainable environment for current and future generations. ” The ECCC portal gives you quick access to local, regional and national weather forecasts (or access them directly at weather.gc.ca), as well as expert weather forecasts from astronomers, fishermen and more.
However, I had a hard time finding a space weather section. This is a common problem on government sites as departments change names and departments move to other departments. Canada has an excellent space weather department, which is maintained by Natural Resources Canada. Find it directly at spaceweather.gc.ca.
As well as apps, there are many weather-related websites as well. These are just a few. Future columns will also discuss backyard weather stations.
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