Aside from looking outside and seeing the weather at the moment what do you use at home to prepare for whatever nature may toss your way or in preparation for a journey? The Farmers Almanac,The Weather Channel,a home Barometer/weather station,NOAA Radio,experience and your own observations or something else.I've noticed most television forecasts are only really accurate a day or two out(in relatively unchanging conditions)or in some cases only good for a few hours in rapidly changing conditions- is anything really better than anything else or is making your own observations daily and from year to year the way to go?

as part of being prepared i watch the national weather service, and in particular their "discussion" of what the weather really is and will be for the next week or so. and they are good at hedging their bets.

at first i didn't understand some of their terminology, but after a while i began to get it.

today's "discussion" for my area:

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?wfo=lox&sid=lox&pil=afd

for your area, fill in the box in the upper left-hand side of the link's page, and at that page look at the bottom right side for "forecast discussion".

when i travel i've seen this for other areas as well.

i too watch the doppler as an integral part of being prepared - it shows what's over the horizon that could impact you and your adventure - and make it a real adventure!

fwiw, the farmer's almanac, in my area, has been especially poor this year.

I usually check the the local forecast (TV or Weather Channel) or NOAA & apply 38 years of experience with the local weather. It's always been a mystery to me why I can give you a better 1-2 day forecast for the local area than the local news weather when I know he's been in the area for 10+ years.

For long-term forecasts (2-10 days from now) I check weather.com. For short-term forecasts I use weather.com and listen to my NOAA weather radio.

Ken

I check the NOAA discussions too. The University Of Hawai'i has a great page that puts together all the info you could ever want about weather here in Hawai'i. Fortunately, the weather here is pretty constant, and the forcasts hold pretty darn well. I'm also taking a intoduction to meterology class this semester, which will help me with that. I'm not gonna be a weather forcaster, but I think part of being prepared is having an idea of what Mother Natures gonna throw at you.

I listen to the local NOAA report, and look at the sky. If there are mares' tails this afternoon, there's a low pressure system coming in and there's a good chance of some rain.

If I can hear rain on the metal roof, its raining. If I don't, its not.

Sue

I watch the weather (learned all of the clouds, etc, in the Air Farce), check NOAA, wunderground, the local forecast, and remember the old "red sky at night..." thing...

Thanks for the responses!Generally I check NOAA on the web and I do have a radio that can pick up their broadcasts(from 2 or 3 towers)along with watching the Weather Channel. I was inquiring just to see what else was out there and peoples experiences with them.Once again thanks!

Just keeping an eye on a barometer can tell you quite a bit.

Sue

If you want to know about relatively soon local weather, nothing beats a barometer plus an eye to the sky. I carry a Kestrel 4000 and a StrikeAlert, but that's a bit anal. The Kestrel gives graphical display of the trend of measurements, and that's what tells you what's going to happen, a current reading by itself is relatively meaningless. Depends what you need the info for.

They can't get the weather forecast right for more than a day around here, the 3-day+ forecasts are a waste of time, I don't know why they bother. It seems to me that weather around the Great Lakes is still a big mystery... So often I get "local" weather that says clear and sunny all day and it's pretty clear to me it's overcast and raining at that moment, but I may be mistaken...

You want to have fun, go to central California and tune in on one of the TV weather guessers. Angelo Stalis is the worst of the bunch. He will be telling you current conditions, and if you look on the wall behind him you will see the "graphic readout," and the numbers don't even match. He will be saying that the current temp is 93, the board will read 87, or maybe 99. What a hoot, and waste of time and money...

If I recall, the Boy Scout Manual had a good section on little tricks to help forecast. Things like the "red sky at morning..." Also, a campfire's smoke staying low indicating high barometric pressure, birds heading for the trees, etc. Probably worth a quick look, even if you don't buy one.

Then there are the tarantulas on the move. You see a lot of big hairs spiders on the roads, grab your rain gear...

IfI saw that, there's a good chance I'd just run away, screaming at levels best reserved for pre-pubescent girls. Weather be damned.

You know, if you shoot a tarantula right in the middle of the body with a .22, those hairy legs fly off in all directions. Don't ask me how I know this...

I've noticed that when flies gather on the screens it's about to rain. A ring (halo) around the moon is good sign of rain in the next 24 hours.

For day to day weather reports I gather from the local TV & radio stations & split the difference. When it gets more serious I also check MODOT (Missouri Dept. of Transportation - other states have a variation of this) for road conditions.

I've given up on the long forcast indicators (length of wooly worm hair or animal migration changes.) They don't seem to pan out.

Tim