National Doppler Radar Sites. Quick access is available here for all of the NEXRAD (WSR-88D) radar sites operated by the N.W.S. or by the Dept. of Defense, including radar sites in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Hawaiian Islands. Products available from each radar include base and composite reflectivity, base and storm relative velocity, and some accumulated rainfall products. The radar views from this site also display any warnings currently in effect. And notice that across the bottom, there are buttons where the user can turn on/off map features on the display.

Climate Prediction Center. This specialized forecast center, located in Camp Springs, Maryland, produces mid- and long-range outlooks of weather and climate. You can access a 6-10 day or 8-14 day outlook, outlooks for a month in advance, or for a series of months, etc. A lot of what this center does involves air-sea interaction and climate oscillations. It’s a fascinating field but very complicated, so you may want to stick to the basic outlooks here.

Computer Model Output. This link allows access to the weather model output from a number of U.S. computer models that are run to help forecast the weather. The models cover a variety of time periods, from 0-12 hours (RUC) to 0-48 hours (NGM) to 0-84 hours (NAM), to 0-384 hours (GFS), and so on. There’s a massive amount of information here, and it all gets updated several times per day, more often for the RUC.

Look for one more blog on this topic later this week, and please feel free to comment on what we've done with the Advanced Forecasting section.