Your checklist

Greetings, Dear Readers! This will be our last Sunday School. We are preparing to put this blog to sleep as winter is mostly over and Spring has already sprung in some parts of America. We will have a few more posts but not very many and not very frequently. So, it's going to be up to you, yourselves and you to carry on whatever you may wish from this blog. Yes, we will leave it up and running. That means you can come back any time and use the convenient links at left. This morning, I arranged them in my personal order of priority. That's what we will be talking about today in Sunday School.

Most of you have been flying in a small private airplane. As you know, the pilot goes through a rigorous checklist before taking off. For pilots, this checklist becomes a way of life, a cultural practice and, quite literally, it is the difference between life and death. Failure to follow your pre-flight checklist can mean dire consequences!

Luckily, our checklist isn't on the same level of magnitude. However, I use the analogy to encourage you to develop a "way of thinking" about looking at weather. Try to tick off the element of your own personal checklist whenever you are pondering weather patterns and trends. Try to develop this practice as a personal habit. Put the weather through its paces, so to speak. Ask yourself the same questions and probe the seemingly easy answers for alternate scenarios. Weather happens. It always has and it always will. Whether it happens that we can understand how weather happens is entirely dependent on our "way of thinking" about weather. Although no one ever has or ever will be able to predict weather with guaranteed 100% accuracy, we believe that it is possible to form and craft reasonable "best guesses" that generally reflect prevailing climate trends.

Even if no one can predict the weather, we can all have fun discussing and pondering the weather--it is one common topic that all humans everywhere share. The tools we have been using here on this page will always stand you in good stead. They are the bread and butter tools of weather forecasters everywhere. As such, your use of these tools gives you one leg up on anyone else who simply relies on the "gossip of the day" to form their weather opinions.

I am sure you will find your own personal balance in use of these tools. What works for me probably won't work for you in exactly the same way. However, I suspect we will all wind up using the same tools, even if they are ranked and ordered in slightly different ways.

My "Weather Life" always begins and ends with the jetstream. As I've said before here, I eat, sleep, live and breathe the jetstream. Even if I am not writing about it on this blog, you can be sure it is the very first thing that I pay attention to. "Where is the jetstream?" is the top question that is and always will be riveted into my brain. I would suggest that you also adopt this mantra question "Where's the jet?" as your top-of-the-checklist item.

"Where's the water vapor?" is the next topic on my checklist. To me, the jetstream and the water vapor go hand-in-hand. They are like the sides of a coin--forever joined. I like to know what is happening to the water vapor all year every year. I have been watching the US Navy's water vapor maps since I discovered them way back in 1996. Susun and I even tried to visit the Monterrey Naval Research Lab in 2002 but we were turned away by machine gun toting guards. There are many depictions of water vapor available on the internet. I like the Navy's the best. It is like an old friend, someone I can trust, someone I know and someone who won't let me down in a pinch. So I dote on the jetstream and the water vapor. When we are traveling and have perhaps only a few minutes available on a public computer in some forgotten library in some dust-ball downtown, I go to the jetstream and the water vapor. They are my anchors and the foundation of everything I thinnk about when I think of weather patterns.

I have put the map of the NWS Office locations as the Number 3 link for a specific reason. It's because the AFD's are my "goto" source of weather perspectives. AFD, as you recall, means "Area Forecast Discussion." Each shift in each NWS office prepares at least one AFD each day.
By reading the various AFD's, I have the assembled knowledge of many lifetimes of forecaster wisdom at my fingertips. Here in Idaho Falls I read the Pocatello AFD at least twice each day. When storms approach, I broaden my horizon and read the neighboring NWS Office AFD's. When a really big event is taking shape, I might read the AFD's along the Pacific Coast or as far south as Phoenix and San Diego. To find any AFD in America, simply look at the little map at left and spy out the name of the NWS Office. Thes use this search string in your Google search field: "(__office name__) NWS AFD discussion." Nine times out of ten, this will bring up the correct link to get to the latest AFD for the office of your choice. The AFD's are your Best Friends in this business. Never leave home without them!

The next items are more or less equal--the NWS Composite warning map and the five-day QPF. The warning map shows what's happening right now. The QPF shows the expected precipitation for the up to five days. They give you a great "reality check" in formation of your opinions about the weather today and in the immediate future. I rely heavily on each of them and would be lost without them.

The next two links are also pretty much equal--surface temperatures and the national high & low map. These two links work great in combination together. There are at least a ba-zillion weather maps showing daily surface temps and the ebb and flow of highs and lows. I have picked these maps because they are clea, simple and colorful. Plus, you can see them without having to endure a blizzard of online advertising so common with the commercial weather websites.

The Model Animaiton Link is interesting but can be very misleading. Use it with caution. It certainly is fun to look at but, bear in mind, it's a model. If you read the AFD's as much as I do, you will know that every forecaster who has ever lived has been fooled often by the models. The model animation will give you a medium decent good perspective on how patterns "MIGHT" shape up in the 10 day forecast period. Use a little bit of "left english" and a few grains of salt whenever you click into the model animations.

The Climate Prediction Center is a great website. I've used it for probably as many years as it's been in existence. CPC give you the broad brush strokes of upcoming climate. As such it's a lot like a work of art--the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Keep the CPC graphics at arm's length to enjoy them the most. If you dwell too much on what the CPC has to say, you're almost certain to be disappointed. However, the CPC is a valuable tool when taken in conjunction with the other above tools at your disposal.

Spaceweather is our next link. Spaceweather is a highly entertaining website. I plan on looking at it every day from this point forward. Readers Gary W. (Lizard) suggested we use it for this blog. I was hooked immediately. Thanks, Gary! Space weather won't have the same immediate impact on our weather as a clod front sweeping ashore. However, as the upcoming sun spot cycle begins to take shape, you will begin to see some strong relationships between solar output and the behavior of the jetstream. Right now, the sun is as tame as a sleeping tiger in a zoo. But beware, when this next sun spot cycle gets rolling, it will be anything but sleeping! And the impacts on our earth weather could be profound. Keep an eye on space weather via Spaceweather--it's the best such website there is anywhere on the planet!

Most readers know how I feel about volcanoes. Heck, it three volcanoes in the Aleutians that prompted me to start this blog way back in November 2008. I first learned about the impact of volcanoes on our weather in 1977 when I read Iben Browning's "Climate and The Affairs of Man." One of my Loyal Readers and True Friends, Dave E. continues to send me the Browning Newsletter now published by Iben's daughter. If you don't realize how important volcanoes are to our planetary weather, then you need to go to reform school! Volcanoes are the single most important factor in shaping our weather over the long-term. Nothing else comes remotely close to their impact. Period. I put this link near the bottom not because it isn't important. I put it there because volcanoes don't erupt every day. They only erupt once in awhile. But their presence is ever-present and therefore you MUST pay attention to volcanoes. Visit the volcano website often. Keep an eye on their condition and what's happening around the globe. Looks at where their ash and gas goes in the atmosphere. Pay attention to what's downstream from their location. Make volcano watching a major part of your life form this day forward. Promise?

The Global SST's are very imporant, too. They don't lie. What you see is what you get. Yes, they change. But they don't change quickly. They "evolve." Watching the evolution of SST's is like watching a very slow waltz. It's enchanting and captivating. The key thing to watch for in the SST's is large areas of hot or cold water. The larger and the more extreme, the more impact it is likely to have on weather. If you have time and inclination, I suggest you become conversant in all of the alhabet soup phases of the oceans. The oceans are alive. They are not static bodies of water just sitting there. Oceans are doing stuff all the time. They are conducting "ocean business" and their business affects our business. Big time! The more you learn abou tthe oceans' impact on weather, the happier you will be. Trust me, time spent sutdying oceans is time well spent. However, if you have no time to spend studying oceans, at least watch the SST's--they are kind of like the financial reports of a business. Lots of activity had to happen for a business to be able to complile and file a financial report. Ditto with oceans--lots of "stuff" had to happen in the business of being an ocean for the SST's to rise or fall. You won't really know what went on behind the scenes but at least you get to see the "reports." Never forget to pay attention to SST's. The day you do is the day you will get blindsided!

Below the SST link is the buoy link. This is a "reality check" link. When you see a big storm sweeping ashore, you can check its passport by going out to a buoy anchored in the line of fire. Buoys wil tell you if the sea is really getting its anatomy kicked. Sometimes, storms appear to be full of fury but when you check the buoy data, you will see it's all hype and tease. Buoys don't lie!

Finally, we come to the SNOTEL website and it's companion the USGS real time streamflow gateway. As you know, I refer often to the USGS data. However, I just added this link today for your convenience. Snow and water are the measurable output of storms. They are the "bottom line," so to speak. A storm can be all fuss and bluster but it might not really yield anything of substance. The SNOTEL and streamflow websites will tell you "the rest of the story," as the late Paul Harvey would say. Going to those websites reminds me of a guy I saw in the Customer Service line at a grocery store this week. You could look at the guy and know he had some low rent, minimum wage job. He was clutching his weekly paycheck and he was waiting in line to cash it. His clothes were dirty for a hard day's work and his hands showed the price he paid to hold that paycheck. I couldn't see the eact amount but I could spy it was a small check. I watch him smile when he looked at that check and I felt his pride in himself for a week's worth of hard work. The line was long and slow, so he had time to glance often as his check. Each time as he did, many thoughts flowed through my mind. I realized that's what we do when we look at the SNOTEL's and the streamflows. We're proud of our bottom line--we're proud we have these gifts from our weather--we're proud to have weathered our storms and we're danged happy we're standing in line to cash our check! We're looking for some good times tonight!

Well, there you have it. Don't spend it all in one place--save some for tomorrow, too. I wish you well in your study of our weather. I know this blog will be a great place to visit even if there are no regular posts spewing forth from the blog author. I'm certain that it will be useful to you for a long time to come. I've had a great time writing in during these last 120 days. yes, it started November 8 and today is March 8, 120 days to the whisker! Thanks for being my Loyal Readers. Have a great day and Happy Trails! Cheers from John P.