Weather Model Service Advice?

[Shawn]

Hey all, thought about putting this in the Marketplace, but not sure:

 

I am pretty limited on funds and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions/information on the following services:

 

Stormvista Month/Year?
Weatherbell $160/year.
Accuweather $250/year.

 

Which service do you believe is faster provides the most bang for the buck, etc?

 

I do know WxBell has the best looking maps, but I saw they don't offer the JMA/UKMET/RAP graphics etc?

I'm not sure how much Stormvista costs a month/year and what they models are offered.

Accuweather is okay as I've used it before.. and know they have a lot of models but the $250 a year is a bit steep for me.

 

If you guys know of another service not listed, that'd be great!

 

Thanks!

[weatherbob1234]

Have you tried simawips and it's free?

[ELY_M]

twisterdata.com is also free.  

[LVblizzard]

Stormvista is the fastest service out there, paid and free. It's $30/month or $300/year, I believe. It has rapid updates for most major models, including the ECMWF precip maps. Definitely worth it if you use it a lot.

 

WeatherBell's graphics look fancy, but they're not very fast. I tried it out once and I don't recommend it.

 

AccuWeather Pro has almost every model you could think of, and tons of parameters for every model too. However, updates aren't as fast as Stormvista. Most other non-model related items on the site, you could get free anywhere else. I only have it because the PSU campus weather service shares an account, and it's not worth $250/year IMO.

[Jwarrington]

Hey guys,

 

Is there any Desktop based model services? For PC or MAC.

 

Thanks

 

[Wow]

Hey guys,

 

Is there any Desktop based model services? For PC or MAC.

 

Thanks

 

There's GEMPAK based GARP for linux: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/gempak/tutorial_v2/garp.html

 

But most everything is going to be web-based nowadays.

 

I'd suggest looking into our own model service: models.americanwx.com

 

Here is what we offer: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An-w0sLATGhIdHFZVXJiY09aWXczSG9BLVJ4bGdNbGc&usp=sharing

[JoMo]

Weather Bell has a 7 day trial so I thought I would try it out today. Just talking about the models and features in general on my first 00z run of using the site. I didn't really look at the short range models since nothing is going on weather wise at this time.

 

The user interface is not very well organized but you can probably see that here: 

http://models.weatherbell.com/

 

You would think the Euro precip/2mt maps would be under the general Euro model link, but they are on a different page than the rest of the Euro fields. 

 

Each model has multiple ways to view the maps. You can view it via thumbnails and you click on the thumbnail to get the full size view. There's a java animation of the model, and there is a PSU Ewall style of rolling your mouse over the hour and that pulls up the model panel so you can move your mouse back and forth to create a type of animation.

 

The NAM updated at about the same rate as the MAG site.

The first 192 hours of the GFS updates at the same rate, if not a little bit faster than the MAG site. After that, the rest of the run takes at least 30 minutes longer than the MAG site to complete. 

The GEM updates at about the same speed as other sites. 

The Euro updates slower than the instantweathermaps site. (of course you get maps every 6 hours instead of 24 hours on there) (and it might just be that I'm looking at precip/2mt which may update slower)

 

There are a lot of maps to display, and I'm not going to even attempt to list them all. You get snowfall, precip, upper air, temp, and numerous other fields for each model. (GEM, Euro, GFS, NAM) The maps are beautiful. There's a ton of data available.

 

You also get multiple views depending on the model. Some at the regional level and even some zoomed into the state and even zoomed in to the city level. Other countries, and overall many many different views.

 

You also get the GEM/Euro/GFS Ensembles. The GEM and GFS Ensembles have more options, such as viewing individual members. It looks like the Euro ensemble just has the 16 day means in 6 hour increments. The confusing layout makes finding things like that difficult, since on one Euro page it has a set of options and then you go to another Euro page and it has different options. It should all be on one page. 

 

The Euro (and Ensemble data out to 10 days)/GFS (out to 8 days) data has station plots that have 2m max/min temps and precip plotted on a graph. There's like 2,400 stations for Euro data and 3,900 for the GFS.

 

The CFS v2 maps update regularly but I find them somewhat useless because they appear to change wildly from run to run.

 

The teleconnections page has:

AO (GFS, GEFS, GEM)

PNA, (GFS, GEFS, Euro, Euro Ensemble)

NAO (GFS, GEFS, Euro, Euro Ensemble, GEM)

EPO & WPO (GFS, GEFS, Euro, Euro Ensemble)

 

The data is in graph form with previous runs also plotted. The GEFS and Euro Ensemble is plotted using the means and a range. It's a very cool, clean way of showing these indices. 

 

Overall, from my first look at the site, I like the maps and the way the data is presented for the most part. The main issue I have is with the navigation to all the different pages and why certain pages for the same model run have different options than other pages. It should all be included on the same page. 

[thunderman]

I will second the American wx model service.  If development keeps going as it is now, it will be ahead of most other services (including accuwx pro) by the end of the winter.  They even just added cross sections ... something almost unheard of for less than 20 bucks a month (and even then you don't always get them).