Gear - Weather Resources

These days you can access weather information through just about everything - TV, radio, weather radio, cell phones, websites, and even podcasts. When you go camping knowing what weather you will encounter is about the most important piece of information you can gather. It can affect your clothing, your bedding and perhaps even the shelter you bring. Weather can affect your planned activities and it could endanger your safety, especially if your going mountain climbing or boating. Obviously having accurate, up to date weather can be essential to having a successful and fun camping trip

Since I'm a bit of a weather junkie, I look for and have settled on my favorite source, which is weather.gov, sponsored by the National Weather Service. Weather forecasts come directly from the government meteorologists, the site is updated as soon as conditions and forecasts change, is the direct source of all official weather bulletins, and the direct feed to the weather radars. But the geekest bit of coolness is the "Forecast Discussion"(example). This discussion is a look into the heads of the NWS meteorologists as they examine the data, run their predictive models and make their forecasts. Predicting the weather is still part art and being able to hear what these people are thinking when they make their forecasts is fascinating and kind of fun.

And the Internet has some great resources for get your latest info on the weather, here's some:

-The National Weather Service, my favorite - make sure you view the Severe Weather brief
-The National Weather Service Severe Weather page
-Online Weather School
-Official definitions of severe weather statements
-The Weather Channel
-Weather and Camping Safety
-Pricey but cool XM Satellite weather service
-Nifty Weather Radio