HOW DO YOU LABEL THE WEATHER MAP?

Written by: Brian Neudorff

I got a question yesterday from the "All Skate" Thursday blog post asking the following, "When you look at a "current weather map" you see the locations of highs, lows, cold/warm fronts. What indicator(like wind/temp/pressure) is most important to showing you where the specific location of the high/lows are, if you were looking at a blank map?" I though this was such a great question that it deserved its own blog post.

The top graphic is what you would see on a daily basis when we deliver the weather during our broadcasts. It is the satellite & radar composite with fronts and the different pressure centers superimposed on it. Determining the locations of these different features isn't that complicated. Sometimes it can be as easy as looking at the radar and satellite, at least to get a general location of these features. The next step would be to look at a surface map. I have a couple of examples below.


The surface maps plot the current temperature, pressure, wind speed & direction, as well current dew point. All of these are very important in figuring out where to place fronts, highs and low. In the above graphic I really couldn't use wind speed or direction to know where to place the front or high pressure. Here I had to look at the different pressures and find the highest pressure reading for the high. For the warm front I used dew point temperatures. They are located in green below the air temperature listed in red. Most of the dew points to the left of the warm front were in the upper 60s to near 70 where as the dew points on the right were more mid to low 60s. This told me that the air with the higher dew points was the more moist and humid air mass coming from the Gulf.


Again I couldn't really ues wind direction change to find where to place the fronts. I already told you how I determined the position of the warm front. I used the same method for the cold front. The dew points behind the cold front (to the left) were in the 50s where as the air out ahead of the cold front was very warm and moist as dewpoints were in the 60s & 70s.

Some other ways woud be dramatic change in direction in wind over a short distance. For example had this cold front been strong winds may have been coming out of the northwest behind the front but out of the southwest ahead of the front. That dramatic change would also be an indication.

There are other ways but looking at the different reporting stations plotted on a map and knowing temperure, dew point, wind speed & direction as well as pressure allows a meteorologist to locate and plot fronts and either high or low pressure centers.