Brett Adair
EF5
Just to get an idea here for the upcoming fall chase season, what do you use for your mesoanalysis when chasing? Models, RUC/ETA soundings, and such? Basically....what are your best links that aid you in chasing?
Originally posted by Michael P. Morris
I use SPC mesoanalysis infrequently, often when there are multiple areas of interest and I have to find the best one. My two favorite pieces of software when chasing are Weatherscope and BUFKIT. If you have never used either of them, I highly reccomend.
Weatherscope lets you contour or shade pretty much any observed or derived surface variable so you can make your own customized maps (i.e. theta-e, winds, and surface pressure). BUFKIT is great too. It comes with a tool that lets you save upper-air files in a list for easy download (e.g. the latest RUC runs from all the Oklahoma stations).
Weatherscope - www.ocs.ou.edu/software
BUFKIT - http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/tools/BUFKIT/index.html
You can get BUFKIT data (.buf files) from lots of places, but my favorite is the clickable map at Penn State -http://www.meteo.psu.edu/bufkit/bufk.html
Originally posted by Scott Olson
RUC 13km: http://maps.fsl.noaa.gov/
You can select regional instead of a big zoomed out view of the entire US. I mainly use that site for CAPE/SLP & Precip. I'll use the RAP site for Precip/MCVNG. And the COD site for the windfields, helicity and VV's.
NOTE: The RAP (NCAR) RUC Data is the quickiest to display the new runs. Followed shortly by the FSL site and very slowly by the COD site. As far as I know the COD is still 20km-40km regionally but could be wrong. FSL has 13km and I have no idea what RAP is but guessing it's still 20km.
Plymouth State has a nice way to overlay and control intervals/zoom for RUC/NAM/GFS data.
Aside, from model links. They are some pretty neat programs which can be helpful. Two of which are our own Tim Vasquez's Digital Atmosphere and IWMAP.