The Use of the Weather Map as an Instrument

for Home Weather Forecasting

weather map image

Weather maps are more than just a map with a bunch of funny lines and characters on them. They are very sophisticated and high tech weather instruments that have a number of purposes. Without them, weather forecasting would be very difficulty and the educational process that they provide would be non-existent.

When most people think of weather maps, they envision the maps that they see during the weather portion of the local TV news. A real weather map is much more complicated. A National Weather Service map will have various icons, numbers, letters and symbols on them that are usually unreadable to the layman. The experienced and trained meteorologist, however, will know what each of those symbols represents and what to do with them.

Most of the indicator symbols on a professional weather map will look similar to stick men, drawn by children. What is not apparent to the untrained eye is that those stick characters have particular meanings to the trained weatherman. For instance, a stickman weather symbol can indicate all of the following weather characteristics in one figure: temperature (Fahrenheit), type of weather occurring at time of presentation, dew point, cloud cover, sea level pressure and wind speed and direction. Now that is efficiency.

You may also notice that most weather maps show the patterns known as "fronts." These are red or blue lines with arrows or cups on them. Fronts are also shown in specific gradient patterns. Weather fronts separate airmasses of different temperature and moisture (and therefore density) characteristics.

A "pressure" map will show the different gradients of atmospheric pressure as determined through the use of different types of barometers.

There are different types of weather maps for each type of weather characteristic. For example, wind speed maps will show various areas of a region and what the prevailing wind speeds are in those areas as measured by a device known as an anemometer.

Temperature maps obviously show the different temperatures, usually in Fahrenheit in the US, of local, regional or even national surface maps. Temperatures are always measured by the very common weather instrument called a thermometer.

If one has a desire to know what the relative humidity of a particular region is, they can seek out a weather map that contains that very characteristic. Relative humidity is measured first by a hygrometer or a psychrometer and then the information is broken down by computer weather software and placed on a map where it can be read and deciphered and eventually used to forecast the weather.

Are you interested to know how much rainfall you may have received last night in a specific area? Rain maps can show you this information. Each particular area has within it, a wireless, digital rain gauge that automatically reads the rainfall amount and sends the information back to the weather station where it is, again, turned into a map that indicates the different areas and how much rain fell in each.

The National Weather Service knows and understands that a complicated weather map is much too busy for the common man so they offer maps that reflect each characteristic of the weather rather than just one interactive weather map with all of the weather distinguishing measurements on it.

There are also weather maps that are designed for specific tasks or professions. One such example is a NASA weather radar map which is used in different ways to determine when, where and what time launchings or retrievals or even observations can or should take place.

Another specialized weather map is the simple topographical weather depiction is that of the travel weather map. This map, often found online, can tell a traveler what the weather is in any particular destination they may be interested in.

Weather maps are very valuable pieces of instrumentation that assist both the professional and the amateur weather buff with understanding and predicting the weather. No serious weatherman would be caught without one.