Sep 18, 2018
4 min read
Weather Geek Tools
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
