Best free WX software

[Jay Crane]

What would everyone say the best free weather software is? I would love to have something really nice , but I can't afford to right at this now. What I mean by best is ie weather options, good radar etc. Thanks

JC

 

[John Erwin]

That's a pretty wide open topic since there's so many aspects to weather software; however I would have to give a huge vote to GEMPAK; hard to beat what it can do for the price (free!). Not for the meek however, it requires a linux box and a certain degree of competence and patience to set up and use.. probably not something you would use on the road.

 

[rdale]

Actually I've got it running on my laptop as a VMWare virtual machine in XP, and with Verizon's service now hi-speed in my area do use it successfully...

 

[Mickey Ptak]

IDV is a free program written in the JAVA language. It does some pretty cool stuff if you take the time to learn it. Again it is written with the JAVA language so it is a BIG memory hog and at times can be unbearably slow.

Output Example: IDV

BUFKIT is another free program used for forecast soundings. I like this a lot. Documentation.

Output Example: BUFKIT

There are some more free apps out there you will just have to do some searching. UCAR has quite a few.

Have fun!

Mick

 

[J Kinkaid]

GHCSAT is must have for the cane season

 

[John Erwin]

Actually I've got it running on my laptop as a VMWare virtual machine in XP, and with Verizon's service now hi-speed in my area do use it successfully...

I was kind of thinking you would be one of the few that would take it mobile with you..

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

GHCSAT is must have for the cane season

Tchart is also a must have for hurricane season. It was very useful for me during GPRS era(only way to access Internet at home was my GPRS cell phone).

 

[Tom Stefanac]

A lot of good software has been put forward, IDV, GEMPAK and BUFKIT are probably the best 3 as mentioned before, I love them!!! In late 2004 when elevated parcels were introduced to bufkit that took the cake.

WINGRIDDS and PCGRIDDS32 is good set of software for use with GRIB files. You can plot models fields and parameters that you can't typically find on the net with ease.

http://winweather.org/

As for Level 2 radar software, the NCDC has some cool java software which is an excellent free alternative to Grlevel2. It supports shapefiles and other good GIS stuff.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/radar/jnx/

 

[J Kinkaid]

Tchart is also a must have for hurricane season. It was very useful for me during GPRS era(only way to access Internet at home was my GPRS cell phone).

Where do I find that one ?

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

Where do I find that one ?

It is at http://www.sky-chaser.com/products.htm . My favourite.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I swore I replied to this, now I can't find that reply.

Anyways, check out WeatherScope. It's a freeware that lets you plot all sorts of weather data.

http://www.ocs.ou.edu/software/

 

[Jay Crane]

Does all of this software that everyone has talked about include storm tracking type stuff too? ie Swiftwx, stomlab etc? I'm sorry for sounding stupid, but i'm new to this storm chasing stuff and would love to learn as much as i can . Thanks

 

[Jay Crane]

Hey jketcham do you still live in Pittsburg?

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

I have just came across this - Text Sounding Analyzer at http://62.202.7.134/hpbo/convoutlook.aspx . It does great job. Even marks the indexes what are favorable for thunderstorm development with color code. So in my opinion, it is also one of best free weather software.

 

[J Kinkaid]

I swore I replied to this, now I can't find that reply.

Anyways, check out WeatherScope. It's a freeware that lets you plot all sorts of weather data.

http://www.ocs.ou.edu/software/

Isn't weatherscope loaded with Spyware ?