Weather Predictions Confused - June 19

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heinerv
Posts: 475
Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:21 pm
Real Name: Vic Heiner

Weather Predictions Confused - June 19

Post by heinerv »

It seems again that Clear Sky Clock shows a possibility of observing tonight at Cherry Grove. However, if you look outside it doesn't look too good. So what's going on? Clear Sky Clock uses collected data to make it predictions. However, the age of the data for 10pm tonight is over 15 hours old. The other problem is that thunder storms can really change the cloud cover. If you go to www.weather.unisys.com and select enhanced IR, the Midwest area, and the loop function you can see a thunder storm blow up over South Dakota and spread clouds over southern Minnesota. So observing in Minnesota will always be interesting and rarely straight forward. Incidentally, you can see why the observing chair no longer wants to call regular star parties on or off.
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wkocken
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Joined: Mon May 17, 2004 8:19 pm
Real Name: Bill Kocken
Location: McGregor
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Re: Weather Predictions Confused - June 19

Post by wkocken »

The Clear Sky Chart is more hit-or-miss than I wish it were. Sometimes it helps to click through the cloud cover or transparency blocks and see the underlying maps. What looks like clear skies might be a predicted sucker hole that may or may not actually happen. One way to get more up to date forecasts from it is to sponsor the chart for the location. I almost always used multiple sources.
Bill Kocken
16" f4.5 - home built truss design
8"f6 home built dob
102f7 Explore Scientific APO with Ioptron ZEQ25GT mount
4.5 Orion Starblast
60mm Meade ETX
Homemade equatorial platform
w m kocken at gmail dot com
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