Pertinent Links

NOAA Geostationary Satellite Server: Satellite Information  
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/index.html

This weather website is good for getting satellite imagery of weather phenomena in the United States.  Imagery is provided for four geographic areas: West CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and Tropical Pacific.  There are three different ways the satellite information can be viewed: Infrared, visible, and and water vapor.  I like this link because it provides real satellite imagery of the weather, it is not simulated.  I like using the water vapor information to determine where precipitation events are most likely occurring.

Intellicast: Jet Stream
http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/JetStream.aspx

This weather website is good for getting maps of the direction and wind speeds of the jet stream across the United States.  This website also gives a description of what can be interpreted from the map and gives background information of what the jet stream is.  I like this website because in interpreting and predicting weather it is crucial to understand what is occurring with the jet stream.  The jet stream forms important boundaries of adjacent air masses and can cause differences in temperature across regions.  This website is helpful in providing a map of the current path of the jet stream that might be causing certain weather conditions.  

AccuWeather: Weather News
https://www.accuweather.com/ 

This weather website is good for getting current news for national and global weather events occurring.  The news stories are about a wide variety of topics and applications of weather.  I like this website because it helps me identify important weather events that are occurring outside of my region that I might otherwise not know about.  This website is also good for getting information about natural disasters and their impacts.  This website is also good at highlighting weather severity and trends, for example record colds and severe storms.

National Weather Service: Local and National Weather
http://www.weather.gov/

This weather website is good finding your local and national weather.  This website is good at locating local weather because it allows the user to enter in a City, State, or ZIP code and get specific weather for that location.  The weather information available includes the current conditions as well as a seven day forecast and any hazardous weather conditions.  This website is also very useful for national forecast maps.  I like this website because, it generates a very detailed daily surface map of the U.S. and also has a variety of temperature, hazards, wind direction, and other weather attribute maps both at the national and regional level.  A link for within the NOAA weather service I often use is https://www.weather.gov/mpx/.  This link provides forecast information for the Twin Cities/ Chanhassen, MN.  I use this site mostly for the forecast maps that include predictions for the Twin Cities and surrounding areas that include Eau Claire County.  

National Weather Service Forecast Office: Monthly Climate Data Report 
http://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=mpx

This weather website is good for finding out weather statistics for the past.  This website provides a daily weather report as well as other reports on weather data for major cities in Minnesota, Eau Claire, and North Dakota.  I like this website because of the monthly climate report it generates daily.  I check this report for various things like, snow accumulation totals for the previous day or to look at the monthly high and low temperatures.

Unisys Weather: Surface Data
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/

This weather website is good at providing a surface map of the United States by using weather symbols to describe the weather conditions across the nation.  In the map the weather fronts, winds, cloud coverage, and other weather conditions are represented through symbols.  Here is a link to the interpretation of the symbols used on the surface maps:
http://weather.unisys.com/info/wxp_legend.php.  I like this website because it allows me to specifically see where high and low pressure centers are located in the U.S.

Earth Winds and Jet Stream Animation
https://earth.nullschool.net/

This weather website is a animated, dynamic globe of the world that shows different wind and jet stream patterns across the globe.  The height of the observations can be adjusted to view wind patterns at the surface to the heights of the jet stream.  The globe can also be rotated and specific regions on the globe can be zoomed into to obtain great detail.  I like this website because it is great for supplying information to understand the whole system of weather that is occurring across the United States.  The website shows real time data the user can manipulate and extract information from.