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Need some reading material

Tim Vasquez, I think he's around these forums somewhere, has some great meteorology books. They are must haves for your library.
 
UCAR and COMET had some free online courses in mesoscale meterology among others. I found them to be pretty good. I'm not sure if they are still free, I'd look but I had to send for another password because I forgot mine. Check them out at http://www.meted.ucar.edu/index.htm

I highly reccomend Tim Vasquez's book, the Weather Forecasting Handbook. If you get it from him at http://www.weathergraphics.com/ it's much cheaper than you can get it at Amazon.com. Also, I'd reccomend Donald Ahren's book, Meteorology Today. You can get it used at Amazon.com for about $15-20. It's a college textbook but it's an easy read with useful illustrations and interesting sidenotes.
 
A couple of other good books are Thunderstorms, Tornadoes and Hail and
Weather Maps both by Peter Chaston, and both available on Amazon. They are written on a layperson level, but go into enough detail to be extremely useful.
 
I would recommend Tim Vasquez's books: Storm Chasing Handbook (ISBN0-9706840-3-7) and Weather Map Handbook (ISBN 0-9706840-4-5)

I think his website is: weathergraphics.com

They both have good primers on all the basics of weather observation.

Once you have the basics, for parameters and definitions of such, I would suggest
you take a look at this:

http://www.psci.net/~gfritz/index11.html


good luck
 
I would also recommend the TESSA 2005 Super Storm Spotter Training Session DVD, available at http://www.tessa.org/tessa_store.html.

This presentation does a great job of building on the basic foundations and concepts you read about in the Spotter Guides. I like the way Mr. Woodall ties together short-term forecasting with radar interpretation and emphasizes ground-truth observation. It was a great 'next step' for me to learning somewhat more advanced concepts, without being overwhelmed with overly technical information.
 
The closest educational video stuff I have been able to find are on the METED (google it) website. A lot of the classes on there offer flash type lectures with visual aids but some you just need to read thru. Many of these classes, however, seem to be geared more toward people with previous meteorology knowledge.
I just started by going to Amazon and looking up used meteorology text books. I ordered "The Atmosphere" 4th Ed. by Lutgens and Tarbuck. Its fairly recent (2004) and it only cost me like $5 INCLUDING shipping!:eek: I have learned a ton just in the first four or five chapters.
Jeff Haby's site, like others have said, has a HUGE amount of free information for everyone from the newbie to experienced veteran.
I have also looked at the Tim Vasquez forecasting and map books and they look incredible (you can view a few excerpts on his website). I plan on getting those when I get some extra cash.

P.S. If your interest is in storm chasing and information, you will need to get yourself a basic background in meteorology fundamentals (winds, pressure systems, moisture, etc) otherwise you will just end up having to google a bunch of stuff to find out what people are talking about. I tried doing that at first and it doesn't work to well. Goood luck!!
 
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