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What weather sites do you look at when planning your next trip?

billski

Active member
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
16,207
Points
38
Location
North Reading, Mass.
Website
ski.iabsi.com
The weather data on the web has gotten vastly better in the last five years. I now have a plethora of sites to choose from with lots of sexy graphs and charts. What do you look at and when? I start looking about 5 days out at models. At about 2 days, I start looking at the real time and short term forecasts. On the night before, I mostly just look at the radar, the road conditions and what vouchers I have. I decide. Then I flick off the computer, get some z's and it's show time.

Here is my steering wheel of sites I count on. Every fall I have to rework it. then, when the season starts, I can blast through the most critical sites in about 5 minutes. Accuweather, weather.com are not even on the check list. http://www.iabsi.com/public/ski/ On the road, I dial up the MRG snow phone just for entertainment's sake. How Eric can have such a sense of humor at 6AM is beyond me...

What do you check?
 

yeggous

Active member
Joined
Oct 8, 2012
Messages
2,170
Points
36
Location
Eagle, CO
I'll bite. As a pro, my go-to sites are:

1) weather.gov
- if you can't check anywhere else, this gives you 90% of the value. pay special attention to the area forecast discussions and meteograms.
2) mag.ncep.noaa.gov
- a good one-stop shopping for all sort of weather model output
3) tropicaltidbits.com
- their ensemble plots are easily understandable
4) http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/~ckarsten/bufkit/image_loader.phtml
- I'm too lazy to run bufkit myself
5) http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/
- check what's already on the ground, and see how it's holding up
 

ScottySkis

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 16, 2011
Messages
12,294
Points
48
Location
Middletown NY
That true but only 2 bug ones in Vermont and two big ones on the Adks I believe.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
 

fcksummer

Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2013
Messages
238
Points
18
Location
Standing Sideways
Website
fck-summer.tumblr.com
That true but only 2 bug ones in Vermont and two big ones on the Adks I believe.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


just enter the town name where the mountain is, switch the map on the right side of the screen to satellite mode and click on the trails once you find them. i've done that for a bunch of mountains i go to and bookmarked them all
 

BenedictGomez

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 26, 2011
Messages
12,119
Points
113
Location
Wasatch Back
I run my own models. Way too much CYA and caution X 100% at nearly every weather website to get a honest assessment when you need it the most. I'll also visit ilsnow, but it's not his job so the posts are infrequent, but he's very honest and well-educated (i.e. a real meteorologist rather than a posting weather weanie).
 
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