When I first began turning my lifelong fascination with tornadoes into an active passion for storm chasing over 14 years ago, I started with the essentials of storm structure. Then I began learning such arcane terms as CAPE, shear, dewpoints, helicity, and so forth, over time piecing together how the different ingredients interact. Bit by bit, the alchemy of the atmosphere–depicted by surface maps, forecast models, skew-T/log-P diagrams, hodographs, station obs, satellite, radar, and other mystifying tools of the trade–began to make sense to me. Tremblingly, nervously, with a deep sense of my woeful lack of knowledge, I began to try my hand at forecasting–and darned if I didn’t start to make some good calls.
Slowly I learned, and I’m still learning. There’s so much to know, and I want to know as much as I can in order to more accurately determine whether there will be tornadoes, and where, and at what time, and whether a weather scenario will be significant enough to warrant the long drive from Michigan to wherever the storms will be firing.
I wish I’d had a mentor to help me learn this stuff. Thank goodness for the community on Stormtrack–for the many experienced chasers and meteorologists who have generously answered my questions and shared their knowledge over the years! Fortunately for new chasers, a wealth of educational resources exists today that can make the learning curve quicker and less frustrating.
And that brings me to MetEd
I just completed a MetEd satellite interpretation module on vorticity maximas and comma clouds. The material has both enlightened me and kicked my butt. I’ve learned enough to know that I’ve got a lot to learn, but also enough to make better use of water vapor imagery. Now I’m moving on to vorticity minimas, but after finishing the first module I had to just back away for the evening and take a breather. This stuff may seem simple to some, but it makes me want to find a nice hard surface and bonk my head against it. I get the concepts, but working them out in real-life case studies is something else. What gives me incentive is the payoff of becoming a better forecaster. MetEd offers some fantastic tools for pursuing that goal.
Short of a formal education in meteorology, MetEd online courses are probably the best thing going for those who want to acquire basic forecasting skills or expand the skills they’ve already got. I recommend them highly. A program of UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), MetEd is no lightweight survey. It’s a constantly growing and evolving suite of vanguard educational products covering a broad sweep of meteorological topics, and it is used by scores of operational forecasters to help them sharpen their blades. Predictably, some of what it offers is well beyond the grasp of most lay persons. Yet a fair amount is accessible to the motivated self-educator, and well worth the time it takes to absorb the material.
The course I’m working on, Dynamic Feature Identification: The Satellite Palette, is a good example. Its interactive format lets you get your hands dirty with actual application as you learn about vort maxes, vort minimas, comma clouds, deformation zones, blocking patterns, and more. Once I’ve completed the full course, while I’ll assuredly be no expert at interpreting water vapor imagery, I’ll nevertheless have gained some knowledge that will serve me well–stuff I’ll be able to use next spring when Big Weather returns to the Great Plains.
If you want to bone up on weather forecasting of any kind, from severe thunderstorms to winter weather and more, you owe it to yourself to check out MetEd. Do it now and you can thank me later for sending you. MetEd is a great way to hone your skills during the long stretch between now and Storm Season 2011.
