• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Sources for Forecast Soundings

Joined
Jul 2, 2004
Messages
1,781
Location
Hastings, Michigan
With a thread underway that compares sources for forecast maps (HazWx vs Twisterdata vs CoD), I thought I'd see who's using what for forecast soundings.

There are four free sources that I'm aware of: Twisterdata, CoD, Earl Barker, and Bufkit. Of these, I find the first two to be the most convenient: just point and click for the sounding you want. Earl Barker's is great but more involved, and Bufkit is purely awesome, but I just don't get how to use it, and the times in the past when I made the attempt, it seemed inordinately time-consuming. So for quick-and-easy soundings, I opt for TD and CoD.

I also purchased RAOB plus several of its modules some years ago. There's nothing else like it--it's like Bufkit on steroids, but it's much easier to use, it processes data from just about any source you can throw at it, and its hodographs are the ultimate. For me, it's kind of like owning an atomic cannon to hunt squirrels with, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So for me: CoD and Twisterdata for fast skew-Ts and RAOB for in-depth soundings.

Who else is using what? Does anyone besides me use RAOB?
 
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I need to learn how to use Bufkit too. I have downloaded and played with it a bit but I still don't know how to pull in data for every radiosonde site.
 
I like Earl's displays the best. Large graphics, hodograph, and a host of derived parameters (CAPE, STP, etc) listed underneath. Harder to use as you have to know the metar ID of each location, though. I solved this issue by building a bookmarks page to soundings from all 3 models for most Great Plains and Midwest locations:

http://stormhighway.com/data/soundings.php
 
Earl Barker's site had a great link to 5km NAM soundings that may or may not still be working. Of course on bigger days I check the special soundings for that "what's it like right now" forecast.
 
For forecast soundings I usually use COD and TwisterData because they are fast and easy. Though I will occasionally use the ESRL HTML5 sounding tool. It's the only site I know that provides FIM forecast soundings...ya know...if you're into experimental models :)

I occasionally use forecast soundings provided by the WRF-ARW core ran by the local WFO-LSX here in St. Louis.

For actual soundings I pretty much only use the SPC website or RAOB. For past data I use the UWYO site.

I only use BufKit in the winter.

And yes, I use RAOB heavily. It's expensive, but really powerful. And it can consume any sounding in any format you throw at it including the TwisterData text!

Now if we only had access to the ACARS/AMDAR soundings...
 
I need to learn how to use Bufkit too. I have downloaded and played with it a bit but I still don't know how to pull in data for every radiosonde site.
For Bufkit data, just go to http://www.meteo.psu.edu/bufkit/CONUS_NAM_12.html , click on the model you want with appropriate runtime, then move your cursor over the site you want to download, right-click over that site and choose "Save link as" (in Firefox) and save it in the bufkit data directory.
 
I've used RAOB for many years. Once you learn how to use it, you won't go back. Plus John is always providing updates and answers questions in a very timely manner.
 
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