WX Works Tips & Tricks - One Stop-n-Shop

[Doug Raflik]

The "satellite" feature on XM is a joke. Don't plan on obtaining any useful data from it.

I disagree with this statement. I use the satellite feature like most people are using the cloud tops feature. It only shows clouds ABOVE 5000 feet, so if you are under a low deck of clouds, it may show you under clear skies, but when towers start going up, you can see them 15 to 20 mins before precip starts. And its updated every 10 minutes.

I think the "winds" feature on XM is pretty worthless too. The only thing I ever use it for is locating approximately where the surface low is.

It is just model data. I use this feature to help determine a target when there are more than one hot spot. You can view the winds from the surface up to something like 30,000 feet, so its a good way to see where more backed winds are forecasted for the short term.

IMO the "sensor" product is one of the most valuable tools you get with XM. For those who don't know, it is essentially a surface chart updated every hour. It is great for last minute forecasting and identifying mesoscale features that could be very important.

Hmmm. Every hour? Am I getting this mixed up with a different feature? The surface obs are updated every 10 minutes on mine. And there is a fairly good concentration of them. Depending on how panned out or zoomed in you happen to be, will determine how many show up. I agree, this is one of the most useful features. Great to help find boundaries, and keep track of dewpoints, etc...

The "strikes" feature is something I started using this year. When there are multiple cells competing it can give you a good idea of who is winning. I think it is pretty accurate and it is something I always watch when I am trying to figure out what storms are strengthing.

It is also a good indicator for dying storms. I noticed the lightning stops a little before the storm visually starts to show signs of weakening or dying. Overall the lightning feature is nice, but for accuracy in individual strikes, I dont put much faith in it. I have sat in an area for 15 minutes with no close strikes, and a bolt may appear within a mile on the screen. The opposite is true as well. A close strike may not show up.

Don't rely too heavily on the "radar".

I am not going to jump on the radar bashing bandwagon here. It should be used to help find initial development, and to compare what storms are more dominate when approaching storms that are semi close to each other. I find nothing wrong with the radar other than the smoothing affect. For those that complain about this... So what if you cant see "details" of the radar. What have you been doing all these years while out in the field before threat net? Did not having detailed radar ever keep you from finding the meso of a storm? Were you unable to visually see that precip was wrapping around and forming a hook in the storm? So why is it such a problem now? In the heat of the chase, once you are that close to the storm, you should be looking at the storm for these features, and not relying on the radar. Use threat net to get you TO the storm, then go visual. OK, it would be nice if it WAS more detailed, but man, ill take what they are offering over having to be constantly looking for a wi-fi hook up. One thing I will add. If the storms are fast moving, you need to be aware that what the screen and your GPS location is showing, in relation to the storm, is going to be several miles off. If you are close behind the storm, it can show you in the heaviest precip, when in fact you have sun shining on you. Its just another tool. Not a "solve all" miracle.


Doug Raflik
http://www.wxnut.net
[email protected]

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Doug the "sensors" feature updates hourly. Each station will update at a different time, but as far as I know it is in hour long intervals. When you click on an individual station it will display the time it updated above the other station measurements.
If you like the "wind" product now, start comparing it to actual surface observations and you won't like it for very long.
As far as the "satellite" product goes, I guess people can check it out and decide for themselves whether or not it is useful. For me personally, I look at satellite images to detect the subtleties that are not going to show up on the "satellite" product on XM. The smoothed gray blob just doesn't do it for me. There was one day this year when it was accurately showing where the break in the cloud deck was, but other than that, I haven't had much use for it.
I have checked the "satellite" product when towers were going up to see if the "satellite" feature would perform the same function as "tops". In my experience, the "satellite" product shows a wide area of light cloud cover where the "tops" feature shows one distinct tower going up (there have been times when "satellite" didn't show anything at all). Once again, people can check it out for themselves, but I really think "tops" is much better at showing you exactly where towers are going up. When you are waiting for storms you can overlay radar, satellite, and tops and see what shows up and when.
Whatever you do, don't get a Toshiba Qosmio if you plan on running XM on your laptop.

 

[Brett Adair]

IMHO, these guys could have done a better job on the Responder package if they were going to charge and arm and a leg for it. Some of the features are pretty worthless not to mention how low resolution the radar data is. I mean, come on. 55DBz being the highest on the scale? That's pretty lame. My GRLevel3 will do better than this. No VIL or SRV products? I mean sure, you have the composite shear product which is great for determining areas of enhanced shear, but it doesn't show you if it is with strait line winds or with an actual circulation. They could do better to be from Baron....

:roll:

 

[Greg Stumpf]

From this Web page:

http://www.mcwar.org/gallery/chase05/2005may12.txt

A recollection of one chaser's account of the 12 May 2005 South Plains event (while being pummeled by the large hail very close to the tornado), I found this quote:

We were in the area of rotation, according to Mobile Threatnet, but you have to remember those images are 10 minutes old.

An example of Threat Net Cancer. Ask me why they couldn't just look out the window to determine that they were too close to the low-altitude rotation!

 

[John Gnuechtel]

I had WxWorx for about a year. My receiver stopped working propperly, and I opted to cancel the service rather than buy a whole new unit (the warranty was already out). I permanently installed a computer in my car, mainly for navigation and XM music radio. But it would also automatically load up Mobile Threat Net on startup. It was kinda fun being able to peruse the weather whenever I was at a stoplight. But since the first time I got it to run, it always felt like an over-priced toy.

Since the products are never real-time, and the delay isn't always a constant, it quickly became more of a verification tool to me, as odd as that may sound. I would watch the sky, and then see if it did what I thought it did twenty minutes later when the picture came up. I found that to be pretty useless. "XM said it rained here ten minutes ago. Good thing too, because I never would've known that by looking out the window."

Considering the nature of the data, and the compression it has to go through to get it all into the receiver in a timely manner (you may be looking at your location, but you're still receiving radar data from...say...Portland, Oregon), it becomes such an approximation of what's happening at the local scale that it doesn't provide anything better than what you can see with your eyes.