Weather Tools for Weather Enthusiasts

There are plenty of easy-to-use weather tools available to anyone. For those of you interested in going a little deeper than the typical TV forecast, check out these sites.

Severe Weather and Model Guidance:

Storm Prediction Center (SPC)

The SPC website has plenty of tools available to keep up to date with the latest severe weather threats across the nation.

If you are interested in looking at model data (such as the NAM or GFS), you may want to check out Twisterdata or College of Dupage Weather.

Twisterdata and the College of Dupage model’s page is for weather enthusiasts and may be rather meaningless to someone without experience.

 

Precipitation/Snowfall:

The Weather Prediction Center (WPC) has tools for both rainfall and snowfall. The precipitation forecast tool will show the forecasted precipitation over the next 7 days.

The Winter Weather Page is much like the precipitation page, but shows the probability of a certain amount of snowfall occurring in a given area.

Weather.gov has a Precipitation Analysis website that shows roughly how much precipitation fell over a given area. This is derived precipitation estimates, not exact rain gauge totals.

Satellite – where are the clouds?

Want to know when the clouds will be leaving the area. You can check out the visible satellite from the National Weather Service and put the satellite in to motion to see where the clouds end and get a rough estimate of how much longer the clouds will be around.

Radar:

A basic radar with reflectivity and storm relative velocity is the NWS Radar.

Drought and Climate Tools:

Various drought and climate tools are available. The Climate Prediction Center and the Midwestern Regional Climate Center has a whole slew of tools on their sites, from rainfall, drought, and climate forecasts, to specific tools such as the tornado track tool and the West Nile Virus Project.

The U.S. Drought Monitor contains drought information for the entire country.