Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

August 12, 2015 9:31 AM

The NOAA weatherView shows global winds at 500 millibar pressure level (~20,000 ft) as well as temps, precip, moisture, pressure, and day/night.

more at NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab

posted by the man of twists and turns (6 comments total)

500 millibars is about halfway "up" the atmosphere when viewed in terms of atmospheric density, which is around 1000 millibars at the surface. Aviation-focused meteorologist Scott Dennstaedt made an analogy based on something his basketball coach taught him, which is to avoid head-fakes by watching the midline (waist) of an opponent to see where they are going next. The 500mb constant pressure chart provides similar information for weather.
posted by exogenous at 9:56 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

see also http://earth.nullschool.net/. which shows winds, temperature, humidity, and a few other things, at different hPa levels, and also lets you change the map projection.
posted by rebent at 9:59 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you're into this, you'd probably also like earth.nullschool.net, which displays wind speeds at many different levels and generally has a lot of cool options to get lost in (click 'earth' to pull them up).
posted by wikipedia brown boy detective at 9:59 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

The ground level winds for the US are here, which I got from a previous post some time back.
I was comparing them. Interesting differences.
posted by MtDewd at 11:48 AM on August 12, 2015

That previous post has an interesting link -US wind patterns for the last 72 hours.
posted by MtDewd at 11:56 AM on August 12, 2015

Playing a lot of X-COM lately. Kept expecting a UFO alert.
posted by Splunge at 12:33 PM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]