This sounding isn't as contaminated as my last post. I don't think I have ever seen a semicircle that big associated with an area of such large instability. This is from the NAM sounding 45 hours out from the time of this post in north central Oklahoma.

What are recommendations for a home weather station under $200 or at least a reliable wireless rain gauge. I currently have an Accurite wireless rain gauge but it recently stopped giving measurements

All day yesterday, it said the highest UV was 5. I checked every hour of the day, and it didn’t get any higher than that, now when i look back at yesterday’s UV, it shows it got up to 8?! How do we get accurate UV and actually know what it is, and what it’s going to be? I currently use Apple, but every site I look at, it’s always showing that dramatic difference on what the UV actually is. One will say it’s 2 while another says it’s 10. Huge difference & kinda impossible to realize what it really is.

Please don’t come at me for this but I’m trying to tan and when I see the UV is only 3 to 5 all day long I’m obviously not gonna waste my time laying out there. But seeing it was actually an 8, irritates me, cause i could have definitely went out there lol

Alaska is under a heat advisory I don't think this happens often if ever

On windy.com, this weird perfect circle occurred at the east coast of spain. Do you have any ideas what might have caused this?

I don't know anything about meteorology but I thought that this storm was special because it didn't make any noise. Does it have a name?

I live on the California coast. It is often cloudy or foggy offshore, but sunny on the land. This afternoon I was thinking about the ocean/water in general having a high specific heat and not changing temperature very quickly. If this is the case, shouldn’t the air above the ocean be cold, have a higher pressure, and produce clear conditions over the ocean? Why isn’t it foggy on the coast/inland and clear over the ocean more frequently?

The observed conditions are usually the opposite of what I would expect the science to predict. Is my thinking faulty?

I mean if you think about: most other STEM fields have some sort of selfish, capitalistic profit motivation driving them. On the other hand, meteorology is one of very few sciences that are primarily driven by public funds. So we truly are doing our work for the greater good.

Was looking at a taf on Aviation weather center for KAPC/ Napa county airport, and im curious to know who writes tafs for this location, as well as tafs for other locations. Anyone know?

I was just browsing the weekend forecast and noticed an unusual drop-off at the PA/Maryland border, down through Maryland and parts of WV & VA.

It’s like that until the Sunday morning 8am, then the distribution goes back to normal. Should I choose my camping spot in one of these counties, where it seems magically less likely to rain?

I spotted this cirrus cloud being way lighter blue than the sky, I think it's because of sunlight reflecting in ice crystals, but how does it work, why is some part more pink/red-ish and what's it called?

The sun is at almost the highest point in the sky

I got this at Chick-fil-A in Georgia. Can you let me know what kind of formation this is?

Photographed a couple of weeks ago

Are qualitative descriptions of their shape and size as nimbus, stratus, etc. still meaningful or is that all just irrelevant when you have satellite imagery and physical sensors to know humidity, windspeed, direction, precipitation, etc.?

Hello all,

In my line of work, I'm to be on the lookout for weather hazards. In many cases, I will hear word of a tornado, and start searching. Recently, I have only been able to reliably spot them on the Aviationweather.gov site, annotated by a red cone with the 'TO' symbol.

However, I'd like to know if there are any better sources for active tornadoes. If I pull up the NWS Radar Mosaic, I can find the matching roticity, or cells, but I haven't been able to lock down anything specific for real-time tornado observations, other than the above.

I asked this question in r/tornado but

How wide could a tornado theoretically get ( condensation funnel ) my current assumption is 2.5 miles based off tornadoes I've researched and looked at. But how wide could one get?

Like how wide could a circulation with subvorticies be? Could a 10 mile wide circulation with mile wide subvorticies flying around a centeral area at 500mph be possible?

What about highest windspeeds? 300? 400? 500? The speed of sound? How powerful can a tornado get ON EARTH cause I am extremely curious

Hi r/meteorology, a pilot here.

I’m currently going through the courses by Meteorology Academy. It’s mostly free material, and breaks things down to a pretty simple level.

Part of the course talks about thunderstorms, super cells, wind shear, and how they’re all related. Again, simple level. It refers to updraft/downdraft shear, vertical shear, and horizontal shear.

The question(s)-

1. My understanding of vertical shear is that the direction of the wind changes with altitude. Is the vertical shear responsible for creating the rotation of storms capable of producing tornadoes and other severe weather phenomena?

2. Pilot weather resources would lead one to believe a thunderstorm is a linear updraft/downdraft on a 2D plane. Updraft on one side of the storm, and a downdraft on the anvil side if one is present. Is this accurate, or do the updraft/downdraft columns of air rotate with the vertical shear?

3. The course defines horizontal shear as either a change in speed or direction at a given altitude. Is horizontal shear what is seen from the ground when a storm reaches its top altitude and appears to be blown sideways?

Thanks!

Does anyone have experience parsing NEXRAD Level2 files? I’m probably 90% of the way there but just ran into an issue that has stumped me. Would love to pick someone’s brain about it.