Steve's eclipse weather page is a collection of several different types of charts dealing with the weather for our upcoming great solar eclipse of 2009. Many of these charts are of the type "only a meteorologist could love." However, most folks with the ability to reach a map or graph should be able to glean some interesting information.
Most of the charts are produced on my home Linux-based computer. Some of the charts use forecasts generated by the U.S. National Center for Environmental Prediction, while some use forecasts generated by my own configuration of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. Most of the charts are updated at least twice per day with the lastest information.
How good are they? Well, we all know that weather forecasts aren't always perfect. Remember that these plots are created from computer models of the atmosphere. The state of the science has advanced greatly in the last decade, but, as I remind my wife, "they are not always perfect."
This is a link to the overall eclipse figure from the NASA/GSFC Eclipse page. It shows the broad swath of the partial eclipse and the path of the total eclipse (dark blue line). All of the times here (and on my charts) are in Universal Time, or UTC. China is eight hours ahead of UTC; 1200 UTC is 2000 (or 8:00pm) in all of China (the whole country is in the same time zone). This is tweleve hours later than U.S. Eastern Daylight Time. I don't know what time zone the ship will use when we are at sea but it will probably be one or two hours later. Set your GPS or digital watch to show UTC on eclipse day and you can use these charts to see the right times.
These links go the Weather Underground pages for these cities. There is a great wealth of information on Weather Underground, including tropical weather. It is usually presented in a very easy-to-read and understand format.
These charts show the output from my WRF simulations over this region. On all of the maps, I have drawn the central line of the eclipse. The point of maximum eclipse is shown as the marker far east of Taiwan. The total eclipse path is about 250 km wide, so we have a lot of ocean to look for clear skies. While I hope to get the full path on these charts, I probably won't get that done before the big day.
These pages open 72-image animations, so they will take a little while to load. Click "FWD" to run the animation, "STOP" to stop it. The stop controls may not work in some browsers. You can use the "+1" and "-1" buttons to single-step through the images. Each image is one hour of forecast. Look at the title and you will see the forecast time move forward.
Sea Level Pressure and Precipitation. The lines show pressure and the shading shows the last hour rainfall. Where there are lots of lines close together, it,s probably near some kind of storm system. Typhoons have lots of lines. :( The brighter the color, the heavier the rainfall during that hour. As I type this on Jun 22, you can see the development of a tropical depression or storm moving towards the Phillipeans.
Cloud coverThis chart purports to show cloud cover from the forecast model. My impression is that it seriously underestimates the cloud cover, but we will see. This is a very rough picture of what a satellite image might look like.
Surface temperature. Sorry about the hideous color scale. I'll try to make it better soon.
Surface winds. The arrows point in the direction towards which the wind is forecast to blow. The color denotes the speed in knots, which is 1.15 mph or roughly 0.5 m/s. The read lines show surface temperature.
500 hPa winds/temps. This chart shows the flow at about 5000 m or 18 000 feet above sea level. The winds tend to blow parallel to the height contour lines with the lower heights on the left. Meteorologists can tell a lot about what is going on by looking at this chart.
These charts are produced with forecasts created by the NCEP Global Forecast System, the United States' global forecast model. It produces forecasts out to 16 days. It has decent skill out to about 5-7 days.
Sea Surface Temperature. The estimated sea surface temperature. Away from the coast and absent strong winds blowing from the coast, the air temperature will not deviate much from the sea surface temperature. Note the cooler temperatures near the China coast and up in the Sea of Japan.
SLP Pressure and precipitation. Like the WRF data, this shows the large-scale pressure pattern and 12-hour rainfall forecast. You will note that, since this is from a global model, the pattern is a lot more coarse than the WRF plots. The plots are shown at 100 km resolution for the first 7 days, then 250 km resolution for the rest of the forecast.
Surface winds.Same kind of plot as the WRF data, but at much lower resolution.
Ocean wave height forecast. Forecast of the wind wave and swell combined height. You can see the storm centers move across the waters. We're on a big ship, so this shouldn't be too much of an issue unless a large storm is nearby.
These plots are called meteograms and show the forecast conditions at a particular point in time during the forecast. The top table shows forecasts for particular cities where our tours are visiting. The second table shows forecasts for points along the central line of the eclipse. Refer to the map linked at the top of the weather page for the location of these points. Hopefully, I'll add some more explanation of these charts in the coming days.