One very useful way to look at a time series of meteorological data at a particular point is by ploting the data in a “meteogram.” In a meteogram, time progresses from left to right across the figure. One or more quantites may be plotted, either as line graphs, bar graphs, symbols, numbers, shading, etc. Using a meteogram, one can get a feel of how conditions change and evolve at a stationary point (termed the “Eulerian” perspective). This is handy because most people are rather stationary with respect to the atmosphere (unless you do a lot of traveling), so a person’s natural perspective is Eulerian. Weather maps, or satellite “movies” are good for giving an overall perspective of the “big picture”, but it can be difficult to tell what will transpire in your particular locality.
Keep in mind that like all the other model forecast information provided by COLA, these data are “as is.” They are straight from the computer models at the National Centers for Environmental Research (NCEP) of the National Weather Service. No interpretation, corrections, or other objective or subjective changes have been made. These are not the “official” forecasts, though in most cases they should resemble them rather closely since the official forecasts for your region are based on these models to various extents.
Forecast meteograms are given for selected US cities. In fact, the the forecasts are based on the grid point nearest the city in question. The models cannot directly discern any features of the terrain or atmosphere smaller than the grid resolution (although certain aspects such as the small-scale roughness of the land surface, and the sub-grid scale distribution of thunderstorms are represented indirectly by using parameterizations). Thus these models may not do a good job of forecasting very localized weather such as might be associated with things like mountainous terrain, or sea breezes. MORE…
Thanks to: Weather and Climate Data