Some of the main things weather forecasters take into consideration are satellite images and different forecast models from various meteorological agencies. Here are some of the free tools that I found weather experts use daily in their work.
1. Weather.us — global satellite images
- You can choose to view any HD satellite images globally or in a specific country
- Forecast, Model charts, Observation, Radar & Lightning
2. Windy.com — Best visualization weather map
- Great and easy to understand visualization for wind, precipitation, cloud and etc.
- Can select any point on the map and compare the weather forecast between 3 models; ECMWF, GFS, NEMS
- Has iOS app and customizable notification
3. Meteoblue — Free Multimodel Report
- This is the only one website that give you multi forecasting model graphs globally for free
- It will suggest you to see multimodel report if the reliability is low
4. Nullschool.net — 3D earth wind map
5. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory — Tropical Cyclone tracking
6. Japan Himawari satellite
- Adjustable images parameters and view past data
- Himawari-8 Real-time on 3D Earth map https://himawari8.nict.go.jp/
- GSMaP_NOW: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) system providing current rainfall information from Himawari satellite https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP_NOW/
7. Rainviewer.com — Combine radar images from each country into world precipitation map
- Animated precipitation map, easy to understand
- Support 78 countries, update every 5-10 minutes
- Has free application with ads and rain notification features
8. Digital Typhoon - Japan Typhoon Images and Information
- Typhoon information and historical database
- Himawari satellite images
- AMeDAS data and statistical data
9. Meteomanz - Global SYNOP station, GFS, ECMWF Forecast
- Historical global weather observation data from SYNOP station
- GFS / ECMWF Forecast 8 days, 6 hours interval (no historical data)
One thing that you will be amazed is that some of these tools above are actually made by only one or a few makers. They are all weather lover and want to make it easier for people to understand and have access to weather information. So why not give it a try it could be a lot easier than you think.
If I know more I’ll keep adding it here. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to use these tools before you go out.
10. [USA] Penn State Forecasters e-Wall — An electronic map wall with access to pertinent weather data.
11. CHRS Data Portal — Global Precipitation Estimation from satellite
- Uses neural network to classify/approximate cloud types and estimate amount of rainfall
- Grid size: 4x4 km global, Time step: 1 hourly, 3 hourly, 6 hourly, Daily, Monthly, Yearly
- Data Period: January 2003 — Present
- Support visualization on website and data download
12. [USA] NOAA Climate Data Online — Global historical weather station data
- GHCN (Global Historical Climatology Network)
- Covers all WMO weather stations globally
- Can filter data by country/city and dataset to download
- Output format: PDF, CSV, Text
- FTP download(.dly file type) at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ with readme and pdf documentation
13. [USA] NOAA SPC Mesoscale Analysis
- Radar, Satellite observation
- Many atmospheric data options overlay on the map
14. Weather Spark
- Global weather data visulization
- Both present and historical data from weather station and airports (METAR)
- Multiple features: temperature, precip, cloud cover, wind, pressure, etc.
15. Climate Reanalyzer by University of Maine
- Global Daily temperature anomaly map compared to historical base period
- Today’s weather map
- Climate reanalysis map/time series
