Weather page 2001

imported
#1

Trailjournals as far as I know is planning to come out with a weather page that will provide forecasts for the entire AT sometime in early spring(???). Zipdrive probably has this under control, but I’ve been trying to help where I can. I recently tried getting on to finding the nearest town (5-day forecasts) available from accuweather.com. I came up with a list of 9-10 forecasts from springer to Hot Springs, so that’s about a 22 mile average span between weather forecasts. If anybody could help me continue to work on the rest of the trail by finding the CLOSEST forecast available from accuweather for the reaminder of the trail with a goal of maybe ultimately 100 forecast towns the entire length for my rough draft list, that would be great. Please use reference points along the trail where the town forecast would be closest just to help me out. Thanks. -Sweeper

Sweeper

#2

Weather reports in the Southern AT are unreliable to bad in the early season. Better than central Maine where they are nonexistent.The weather offices and stions I could get were Atlanta,Gainsville,Knoxville,GSM.N.P.,Nashville,Chattanooga(rarely),and Ashville.

wyo.skateboarder99

#3

I’m a weather amateur here in Ohio and I rely on our local Doppler 2000 radar to predict the gloom and doom for the day. I don’t remember the name for the effect but since the Appalachains are somewhat high won’t they interupt and modify air flows from the west. Maybe the Bernulli Effect? When a high presure mass over a low pressure mass runs into and obstical like a mountain the high over low forces the low pressure air up the side and squishes it at a ridge top or cleft and this restiction further drops the air pressure and speeds it up to very high numbers and plays hell with the moisture content. Not to throw a wrench in the weather charting attempt but the mountain weather might be tuff to call. The valley forecast should be easy though. Would radar images be easier to use, guys, for the high elevation predictions? Try www.intellicast.com and go to USA and then pick the region of the trail in a three or four state group from the map and click on radar summary. Lots of tools in the upper left tool bar for winds, rain fall totals, shear, rotation etc. Yell if you need help. Farmer’s Almanac?

Bushwhack

#4

Yeah bushwhack, that’s true, trust me: I understand very well that mountain weather is crazy. I’ve been in the hills long enough to know not to trust most weather men as far as I can throw them! Mountain weather will forever be a challenge for forecasters. Me? I say the hell with it! If I were that psycho about plugging into weather radar forecasts etc, I would not have settled on starting date, hell, I probably would not have decided to hike at all. But I still feel this will be an important tool for hikers and worthwhile to work on. Why? Because it’s a crapshoot, but sometimes those folks are close to being right (that’s why they keep it relatively general) The accuweather and national weather service uses a series of radars doppler, national satallite and also applies more whacked out factors to come up with weather predictions such as heat of the pacific, yearly trends and yes… Mountain ranges too plus other interesting stuff. So what is this? An educated guess? Damn straight! And speaking as a hiker: sure, I’ll take that to nothing. It’s not like I’ll have access to the weatherchannel every day, every hour, and every minute when they may (thanks to the advent of the radar) be able to tell you what is REALLY going down as opposed to what they think will be going down. Maybe God can give you the accuracy you want, I personally just pray to Him saying: “Your Will be done.” and then prepare for the worst. PS- I threw out my walkman, I’m more of the listen to nature sort of guy. I’d just like a quick an easy page where I can get an educated guess for what the next week of hiking holds when I can get to the town library (which will probably not be so often…) I think Zipdrive has an account to gank stuff from the accuweather site, but I’ll check out the other one for shits and giggles. -Sweeper

Sweeper

#5

Soooo how will this be avaiable to us on the Trail? I have my PDA with a modem but it doesn’t have online capacity. However I can send YOU weekly Storm Tracker 7 post weather if you want to tract general features. Oh, that’s right, you’ll be near in front of us. Doh! I’ll just wad it up and throw it at you across that shelter. Sweeper, weathers up! Pap! Or a snowball?! Are we charting general climate conditions so folks can plan what gear to take? We know what to take “cause were experienced packers” but the new folks can be baffled. What’s the plan?

Bushwhack

#6

The fact is that it won’t be available to us on the trail. I usually just trust my gut and keep my eye to the sky… High mares tails=stormy weather in 24-48 hours usually, red sky in morning, hiker take warning, etc. Probably most accurate weather prediction avalailable. Oh yeah, there’s also the grapevine. When I get to town, I’ll see if I can scope out a library and then get online to check out the forecast. Just go to trailjournals.com/weather and click somewhere on the coming soon (maybe by yours truly) AT map for the section you want the forecast for. And then you’ll get the five day forecast with option to take a peek at 10 day forecast but of course you can divide the chance of that being accurate in half right there on the spot. Plus 10 days will see you further away from the target town where the forecast is being applied. Thems the breaks with life on the go. Suck it up. This will be a nice resource for new comers as it will provide historical weather data. Maybe like averages and whacked out trends to give the green horns just an idea of what they may be getting themselves. That’s the plan anyway. It will never overcome the unpredictability factor of it all, but I would have it no other way. -Sweeper

Sweeper

#7

Spoken like a true nature lover. The crazier the weather the better. Although in '96 23 staight days of rain was a little much. There are a few functional weather reports for altitude if we can get them from the local stations at the base of the Trail as I do in the Teton’s. Hit and miss though and since very few folks live up high near the AT the best bet is an area that has ski slopes close. Kind of like the water conditions on the Great Lakes mixed in with the ground/town weather. Does NOAH have a list of stations that give “mountain weather reports”? Or call the stations in the big towns and see if they want to help us with a forecast. They would be the ones to check with since they have the tools right there.

Bushwwhack

#8

Our intent was to poke the chad but we got confused. Opps wrong forum. Our intent is to provide the readers of the site, i.e. your family and friends, with an easy way to view the weather on the trail. We hadn’t thought that the hikers could use it. I guess because it didn’t really matter. We still hike. Most of the time I got my weather forecasts to see if it was going to rain or not. To decided if I was going to tent it or stay in the shelter. While in town in the hotel, the weather channel was a great source and could be used to forecast the next week or so. The radio was my source of weather on the trail. But if an internet weather source was put together for the trail I probably would have looked at it while in town.

Since I am going to set the weather up in a database, we could use this year as an accuracy check. If you '01 hikers keep a record of the weather we can see go back and see how accurate the predictions were. It would be interesting to see how wrong the weather people are.

ZipDrive

#9

Thanks Zip, as you said we still have to hike anyway. I’ll be carrying a Sharp PDA w/moden so I can send journals to my sister-in-law who will post to 'Journals and my personal page, stepbystep.cc. No ribbing on the electronics, guys. I can’t type worth a darn as you have seen and when tired my wife will do it. That way we have two perspectives of six months on the Trail. I can log the weather for a week at a stretch and send it to you if you want. I just wish this little thing had a satelite so I could get radar which is what I primarily use. I also use my wife Kathy’s sinuses as a barometer. They never miss…snuffle/sniff

Bushwhack