Weather Studies Maps & Links

Learning Files

• How to Start a Weather Studies Assignment
  
  The following steps summarize the weekly routine you should follow to complete the Weather Studies course (in addition to attending the scheduled course meetings when they occur).
  
  
  • As time permits, maintain an informal daily watch on weather (a) to follow the development and progress of major weather systems and features, and (b) to relate your local weather to the broad-scale weather picture. This watch can be conducted in a number of ways including calling up the Daily Weather Summary and other maps and images, and viewing quality television weathercasts.
  • Read the chapter in textbook on which the week’s study is based.
  • Complete investigations A and B in the Investigations Manual.
  • Complete the Current Weather Studies, posted on the course page every Monday.
  
  Each of the different learning files is described below.
  
  
• Daily Weather Summary
  
  The Daily Weather Summary is an overview describing the weather pattern across the United States and the location of major weather systems. The summaries of a particular week remain active links for the entire week till late Sunday evening.
  
  
• Weekly Weather and Climate News
  
  The Weekly Weather and Climate News contains links to the latest weather and climate news items. Posted Monday morning and available until Sunday, it will remained posted under "Last Week's News" as well as in the Archives.
  
  
• Supplemental Information
  
  In addition to the Daily Summary, files of supplemental information are frequently provided that expand on a point or add background information. These files are also moved to the Archives section after they are removed from the homepage.
  
  
• Current Weather Studies
  
  Since weather is most exciting in real time, the Current Weather Studies File is designed to build upon (in near real-time) concepts found in the course assignments of the textbook. These files are available starting about noontime (Eastern Time) on Mondays.
  
  
• Supplemental Information ... In Greater Depth
  
  In addition to the Daily Summary, Dr. Edward Hopkins will often provide an additional file of supplemental information that expands on a point of the summary material or adds background information on meteorological topics via the Supplemental Information file.

Extras

Several miscellaneous materials are available. Blank plotting maps, meteorological graphs, additional weather information sources, and additional notes are given here.

• Weather Map Symbols
• Updating of Weather Products
• Time Displayed on Weather StudiesProducts
• Listing of Surface Weather Stations
• Listing of Upper Air Weather Stations

Updating of Weather Products

The following is a list of available data and map products:

1. North American surface weather observations - for approximately 200 stations, updated hourly.
2. Upper air observations - updated twice daily (these represent atmospheric conditions above the Earth's surface at 0000Z and 1200Z each day).
3. Radar data - updated hourly (conditions represent a national view at 35 minutes after the hour).
4. Satellite data - updated hourly. (Visible images are only delivered during the daylight period.)
5. General surface map features - including fronts and low and high pressure centers, updated every three hours (these features represent conditions at 00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, and 21Z).
6. Forecast data - updated twice daily, based on computer model output from 00Z and 12Z data inputs.

Time Displayed on Weather Studies Products

You may have noticed that on all our products, a time like 10Z 02 JAN 2004 is displayed. What is Z time?

In order for meteorologists to communicate about data, it is necessary to have a global reference time for all meteorological data. This reference time is commonly referred to by the following names: Z time (Zulu), UTC (Universal Coordinated Time), or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). The value represents the time zone of Greenwich, England, UK. This time will always be ahead of US time zones.

To convert the value to your local time, you need to know the time of year and how many hours different your time is from Greenwich time. For example, a map may display a time and date of 18Z 01 JAN 2004. What time would this be locally in Chicago? First think of 18Z as "military time" and then translate it to a clock value in either am or pm. So 18Z becomes 6:00 pm. To adjust for the time of year, we know that Chicago is in the Central Standard Time zone in winter, so using the table below,

we know that Greenwich is 6 hours ahead of Chicago. Thus for Chicago local time, subtract 6 hours from 6:00 pm and you have 12:00 noon local time.

For a view of world time zones, go to aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/world_tzones.php.