My Favorite Sites

These are the crème de la crème of weather sites. You simply can’t go wrong with any of these babies.

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
  • EOSDIS Worldview – stunning, extremely high resolution satellite imagery from NASA’s AQUA and TERRA satellites.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Products and Services
    • Really an incredible site with a huge wealth of information for looking at past and present meteorological and climate data. I particularly appreciate the Climate Products Interactive Plotting and Analysis Tool, the Climate Products Map Room, and the Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS).
  • National Weather Service (NWS)
    • The Western Regional Headquarters is part of several “regional headquarters” across the nation and offers a number of great services such as a multipurpose interactive map that I often use to get observations from past storms and a satellite page that includes some great water vapor imagery over the Pacific Northwest.
    • The Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service is a great resource for hydrologic information, and the Pacific Northwest is covered in greater detail by the Northwest River Forecast Center, one of several river forecast centers. The National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC) is “NOAA’s (official) source for snow information.”
    • The Storm Prediction Center is great for looking at severe weather and offers a fascinating sounding climatology tool.
  • National Centers for Environmental Information
    • Home of the National Climatic Data Center, the largest archive of weather data in the world. It also offers a number of climate information tools and a very handy “Climate at a Glance” interactive map. They also host several regional climate centers, and we are covered by the Western Regional Climate Center.
    • Check out the Weather and Climate Toolkit, a nifty tool that allows access to tons of information. I mainly use it for analyzing high-resolution NEXRAD level-II radar data.
  • Oceanography tools
    • The “Tides and Currents” website is great for just that but is especially useful to measure tsunamis  via fluctuation in tide gauges. NOAA CoastWatch has stunning, extremely high-resolution SST, water color, and current imagery from satellites, and I use it whenever I go albacore tuna fishing off the Washington Coast.
• Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center
  • A great, non-profit organization that makes weather and avalanche forecasts and hosts mountain weather stations.
• The Storm King
  • Dr. Wolf Read’s website dedicated to the history and climatology of Pacific Northwest windstorms. I am currently acting as a research assistant on some storms and was the chief author of the paper on the November 17, 2015 storm (not yet up at this time).
• United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
  • The Natural Resources and Conservation Service’s snow telemetry (SNOTEL) page is great for looking at snowpack and reservoir statuses for different areas around the nation.
• University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences
  • Great resource for everything Pacific Northwest weather. The University of Washington has one of the best atmospheric science programs in the world and a state-of-the-art modeling center. And don’t forget about Dr. Cliff Mass’s weather blog.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center
  • Simply the sexiest satellite imagery you have ever seen in your entire life.
•  Weather Underground
  • Wundermap – another multipurpose interactive map and a great resource for ECMWF model imagery, which is hard to find anywhere else.