Forecasting for a noob. Where do I start?

[Atreyu Neyhart]

Hello all. Ive been a member here for a lil while and love absolutely love stormtrack. This place offers a little bit of everything for the weather enthusiast, which would be my title I guess. I have always had a fascination/ interest/ and love for weather, but spring times storms and tornadoes have always got my blood rolling. As a young one growing up in Manhattan Kansas, I've seen my fair share(not sure about a tornado). Manhattan tends to get quite a bit of action, not so much I'd be worried about getting hit by a tornado. I can remember a handful of tornado warnings and hail storms and wind events...although the only time in recent memory we actually got hit was June 11 '08. (A date I remember like yesterday). Most of what Ive experienced is evening and night MCS crap. Anyways...I would spend my days watching TWC tapes from the mid 90's (Warren Faidley, Gene Rhoden a few names that come to mind from those films) And I would always ask myself, how could something be such a beautiful wonder of our Planet, yet only cause destruction?. I am also that person that you'll find on SPC and ST reading all the forecasts from all walks getting giddy and itching for storms, because it's what I love. I always keep in the back of my mind that tornadoes, while being such a beautiful phenomenon, cause overwhelming damage and take lives every year. Getting to the point.. I would say I have levels of knowledge over the average person about severe weather; moreover, I am far from a expert. Looking at the video and pictures by a guy Named Skip has inspired to become levels more educated in Atmospheric Science. So I'm asking what would be a great start for a noob on forecasting? I pretty much want to start from dirt and work my way up. (I dont mean something that will tell me what a shelf cloud is or anything of those likes ) So I figured I'd ask the experts where to start. I haven't decided if I would take classes on this subject in college and I figured even if I don't make a career out of it, I could still learn to forecast. Imo, instead of paying for a lot of the same things I could imagine I can get for free right here. Thanks in advance for all of your answers and advice, it's much appreciated.

Mashed Tater's by gt3corn, on Flickr

-Atreyu

 

[chrisbray]

I'd personally start with "a list of learning resources" which is pinned at the top of this forum. Plenty of good stuff there.

 

[Jeff Hawkins]

Hi Atreyu,
I faced the same questions when I was first starting to get serious about my interest in weather...where to start? For me, it was based on what I wanted to do...did I want to do forecasting? Storm chasing? Photography? You mentioned forecasting, and I would agree with starting with the resources list...you can pick/choose your own path. I think there's lots of good info out there, and you will learn the basics best using your own interests as the guide. Before I found ST, I did a lot of self-learning from the "Field Guide for Weather Spotters" from the NWS http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/brochures/SGJune6-11.pdf. Hope that's helpful.

 

[ChristofferB]

Nice to hear that you are from Manhattan. I studied at K-State back in 2003/2004, went back briefly while on a chase in 2012 as well.

I just went through exactly the same thing as you regarding the forecasting. What made it difficult for me was to know which course/website to start with in order to build the knowledge from scratch. Many of the resources are typically quite difficult to grasp for a beginner but once you get over a certain threshold you can use more and more in-depth web resources.

With the risk of self-advertising but I made a sum-up of the chronological order of resources to address while trying to learn how to forecast (http://blog.stormchasingusa.com/2014/04/01/learning-the-basics-about-tornadic-storm-forecasting/). I have most certainly missed out on several great websites but these were the ones mentioned to me when I started learning the basics of forecasting - and my proposed order of addressing them as well.

ps. Just a friendly note: It really would make your text easier to read if you paragraph it a bit...

 

[Mike Johnston]

Hey and wish you well in your forecasting endeavors. I'm an old K-State man myself...absolutely loved that campus and Manhattan. Are the tubes out at Tuttle flowing yet this season?

An approach I took when starting at severe weather forecasting was to use "training wheels." For example, I would open the SPC's Day One Outlook in one window, and open the SPC Mesoanalysis in another window. Then I would read through the outlook, sentence by sentence, and try to identify the features they were talking about on the mesoanalysis map. If I didn't understand a term, I would look it up and could usually find it on a site such as Haby's Hints.

One thing I've noted is that the best forecasters have an ability to see the atmosphere in 3 dimensions. That's something I've always struggled with because it doesn't come naturally to me. Even so, I try to understand the importance of the upper level flow, short wave troughs, and the like. Also, a great SPC forecaster once said something along the lines of: in order to predict what the weather is going to be, you have to understand what the atmosphere is doing now.