Sunday, October 3, 2010
Website Review: NOAA.com, The Most Accurate Weather For Your Location - ANYWHERE
I came across this website a couple of weeks ago. The website claimed that you could find the predicted weather for the EXACT location you want to know about - even by elevation. I have always felt that using weather.com or a local news weather forecast was inaccurate, since I would typically be thousands of feet higher than what the forecast would report.
After navigating through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website, I quickly saw how useful it would be when planning those trips which take me out of the valleys and into the mountains. When entering a City in the search box it does a fairly good job of bringing up what you are looking for, but, for some reason, if you type in the City AND State, it gets confused. When I tried typing in "Grand Teton National Park" it was also too much for the search engine. I found that typing in the Zip Code gives you the best shot of finding what you are looking for without wasting any time.
Once your desired location loads, you can move the exact location you want within the red box on the Google Map. Under the map the latitude and longitude is listed, along with the elevation. I couldn't find an option to punch in the lat/long when doing a search, but using the map to locate your exact location is no big deal.
**I would say this website is a must when planning trips in the backcountry. Don't waste your time with the forecast you will find on weather.com or on some local news station's website - unless, of course, you want a second opinion, but I haven't been able to find any other website which claims to give an accurate forecast for any elevation.
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