H5 winds

[Bob Hartig]

Is it just my imagination, or is the term "H5 winds" and other "H" designations pretty recent? Seems like within the past months I've been seeing references to them where I never used to see the term used before.

What are "H5 winds"? I've seen other "H" designations as well. What the heck do they mean? Which charts show them?

 

[Eddie Natenberg]

Don't ask me why, but I think H5 stands for the 500 mb height level (obvious contradition though because height isn't constant on a constant pressure surface).

So H5 winds would be 500 mb winds, please correct me if I'm wrong, its still early in the day for me.

Eddie

 

[Jason Persoff]

Eddie is correct, H5 is the 500mb map. The H designations have been around for many, many years. They are sort of shorthand for standard sea level pressure maps. H5 is the most common, though occasionally you'll see abbrevs for H2 (200mb) or H7 (700mb). As the 500mb winds usually reflect storm steering winds and are an interface between the truly upper level winds and the lower-levels, and it is also coincidentally at about 18000 ft which affects pilots of all kinds of aircraft, it is probably the most ubiquitously looked at weather map level.

 

[Adam Atkins]

H stands for hectopascals....

 

[rdale]

Nope... H = Height. hPa = hectopascals

 

[Bob Hartig]

Thanks, all. Weird how I could have overlooked a simple, longstanding term for all that time. Selective ignorance, I suppose.