How To Find Cold Pools Etc

[johnholmes]

Beginners tip

For those of you not yet very familiar with some of the terms used within Net Weather, people talking about cold pooling, Spanish plumes (hot sometimes thundery weather), then I hope this very basic quick guide may help.

IF you have Extra then go the msl and dewpoint charts from T+00 to T+384.

Basically for really cold air at this time of the year you need dewpoints of blue certainly not above green over the Uk, and in winter they will be blue with purple to our north. Even today you can see blue/dark blue showing up over Greenland, the cold pooling some are talking about.

On the left hand side click on the drop down menu on the left and select msl and dewpoint. You can then click on animate or do it manually to see how the cold values, green to blue to purple (winter only usually move about. The dewpoint is a very useful guide for how warm or cold you will feel especially if there is any wind. Temperatures today are no great shakes for many areas but it feels more comfortable, at least to me in my area, because the wind is less strong and my dewpoint is some 4-5C higher than at the same time yesterday.

Failing that then go to under weather at the top and click on data centre, and use the 850mb temps and msl charts.

In this case, around October time ‘cold’, will be shown as usual in blue, often in the Greenland area, certainly north of the UK, possibly due north, and occasionally north of Scandinavia. Play the chart sequence through using either the line above the charts of clicking on the >> sign at the right to see how the warm and cold air is predicted to move about.

Obviously as we move into the winter season then the values tend to decrease over much of the chart, especially to our north. Much as the dewpoints also show.

Anyway I hope it helps some of you, I’ll try and keep dropping in simple guides to giving you a better understanding of what the BBC TV forecasts are showing along with posts from more experienced people on here.

Don’t be shy we all have to learn. It’s a weather fanatic’s site so ask. If anyone belittles your question, press the ‘Report’ button at the bottom left of every post any of us make. One of the admin/mods will take it up if they feel its unfair to you.

Edited September 27, 2010 by johnholmes