Easy to use forecast model browsers

[Skip Talbot]

http://skip.cc/chase/models/

There are a lot of forecast model sites out there with a lot of great plots. Many of the sites, however, have extremely cumbersome and difficult to use interfaces, involving cluttered tables with hundreds of links and complicated animation players. Those sites that do have nicely constructed interfaces, each have completely different layouts. Once you learn one layout and set of menus, you have to traverse a completely different layout and menu set on the next site. This is my attempt to bring some order to the chaos and provide a consistently laid out, and easy to use interface for the various forecast model sites that are out there.

Please note that I did not create these plots and do not take credit for them. I made this site to make my own chase forecasting easier and am sharing it with others in case they can get some use out of it as well. These sites have graciously allowed me to hotlink to their plots.

To use the site, pick a site and model. Select a region and run (if applicable, and select an older run if you're graphics aren't loading). Then you simply roll the mouse over the hours table to animate between the plots. Move vertically across the hours table to see all the plots for a given day. Move horizontally to see plots for the same hour on different days. Click a product to preload the images for that product for all hours. Click an hour to preload all product images for that hour.

You can click the TwisterData plots to load the forecast sounding at that location and hour just as you would on the TwisterData site.

There are issues with the ESRL HRRR and RAP viewers in Chrome. The images don't preload due to some server setting, so you'll have to use FireFox or IE for those models. Javascript must be enabled and some browser addons may interfere with the viewers.

Hopefully you find this site useful. I'll be adding a few more models, but these are basically the ones that I use for chase forecasting. Let me know if you find any bugs or would like to see another model site added. Thanks,

 

[Wes Carter]

Skip, I'm impressed. Thanks for sharing that, and for all of the hard work that went into it. I'm bookmarking it and will be using it some to see if it works for me. I like what I see so far.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[James Langford]

This is fantastic Skip! Very easy to use and having everything in one place is very handy!

 

[John Moore]

Thanks for the list.

I am especially interested in long range ensemble sites - especially those with spaghetti plots. Do you have any recommendations?

I have found:

ECMWF - no spaghetti - http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/medium/eps/

NCEP - http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/?prevpage=index&MainPage=index&cat=MODEL+GUIDANCE&page=MODEL+GUIDANCE - navigation to products is a pain, but has a lot of them

 

[Skip Talbot]

Just a quick update. COD added forecast soundings to their browsers. You can retrieve them from my model viewers now as well. By simply clicking on one of COD's plots you'll get the forecasting sounding at that location and time. COD has the same functionality and easy to use model viewers. I've added a viewer for their plots to my own page, however, so that I can have a one stop model shop with the same layout and features for each set of plots from different sites.

A site with great forecast soundings but a terrible interface is Earl Barker's site. I'm looking into adding his sounding and hodo plots as well, and with similar functionality so that you can just click on the map plots to get the sounding (instead of having to type in an ICAO or 5 digit code), and mouse over hours lists so you can animate the sounding plots as well.

Thanks for the list.

I am especially interested in long range ensemble sites - especially those with spaghetti plots. Do you have any recommendations?

I have found:

ECMWF - no spaghetti - http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/medium/eps/

NCEP - http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/?prevpage=index&MainPage=index&cat=MODEL+GUIDANCE&page=MODEL+GUIDANCE - navigation to products is a pain, but has a lot of them

I've been meaning to add some of NCEP's plots, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Spaghetti plots and having a variety of models to browse from like the ECMWF (not just the GFS) give great insight as to how much agreement there is between the models and how consistent they are. I usually look at the long range plots just to get a heads up of what might be coming, not putting too much stock in it for a chase forecast. As a result, adding these plots has been a lower priority for me, but I would like to eventually include them.