SES Soaring Forecast Page

Plan your own Record & Badge Tasks to be flown at SES.

This is Great: Soarcast from Kilo Delta Software, I am very pleased with my test, and encourage you to try it as well. This software can use a variety of sources for soundings, including Forecast soundings from FSL. Look for "soarcast_install.exe" on the Soaring Server

Search SES's Website

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." --Nils Bohr, Nobel laureate in Physics

How to Use this Page and its Purpose

The goal of this site is to create 1 page that can be checked to get all the data you need before going to the gliderport. Your help would be greatly appreciated! Please help me add useful data that you know about as well as information on how to interpret it. I update this continuously - your links and advice will make a difference. Tell me what you find useful. You may need to "reload" this page in order to get the images to update.

One useful hint on using this page: Instead of clicking directly on the links often it is very helpful to open each link in a new window (This is especially useful for larger images and when the frames get in the way.) In Netscape and IE Right Click on the link and use the "Open In New Window" option. After viewing you can then close those new windows and return to the original window with this page. (Some friendly apple head is going to have to tell me the Mac Equivalent of the right click - is it "alt+click"?).

Use this information at your own risk- not a substitute for an official Aviation Weather Briefing.

Educational Resources for Soaring Weather
I suggest that you read anything you can get your hands on. Look over the data and make a prediction of the day before you fly, then compare this to what really happens. Most of the linked resources are not explained in too much depth by me because a lot of in-depth instructions and details are available from most of those sites. A good example is Unisys Weather which has a lot of details on how to read their graphics. Also explore the University web sites which have tutorials. I have added a ranking system of asterisks next to the titles of the links I have found most useful up to 4 "*".

For thermal forecasting the Thermal Index, RAOB Soundings and other Upper Air Soundings are the most useful tools, start with these. Many of the other instability indexes are listed but are usually harder to apply. The K index and some of the others deal with the atmosphere higher up than most of us fly (500mb - 18,000').

**** Thermal Forecasting Soaring and Flying in Thermal Lift - has great information on Reading Thermal Indexes and Adiabatic charts. One of the best resources, it is from P. J. Kelly at Valley Soaring Association in Williams California (Sacramento Valley): ... Soaring Weather Info page - for California's Sacramento Valley - has many great explanations & links.

**** Advice on Forecasting Advice on Forecasting from Dennis Eckert

**** Forecasting Definitions From Soaring Weather - Shenandoah Valley, one of the best tutorials on how to read a RAOB/skew-T, this has an excellent diagram worthy of printing and keeping at hand. Also: RAOB Conventions

*** An Introduction to the Meteorology of Soaring Flight An Introduction to the Meteorology of Soaring Flight from Neil Parker

*** Forecasting Thermals Made Easy Forecasting Thermals Made Easy Relevant info by Larry Huffman, a Hangglider pilot.

**** Books

Available through the SSA or Bob Wander's Soaring Books & Supplies:
"Cross Country Soaring" by Helmut Reichmann
"Meteorology and Flight, a pilots guide to weather" by Tom Bradbury. From the UK with the major emphasis on soaring weather.
"Practical Wave Flying" by Mark Palmer. Lenticular Publishing, Englewood Colorado.
"Aviation Weather" by FAA/NOAA US GPO, reprinted by ASA.
"The Handbook of Soaring Meteorology" by Lindsey

"Soaring Flight Manual" by SSA
"Understanding Flying Weather" - Soaring weather from soup to nuts, written and illustrated by Piggott
"Understanding the Sky" by Pagen - Well illustrated non-technical guide to soaring weather. Highly recommended by Bob Wander.
"Soar Sierra" by John Joss 1976, the Soaring Press. Chapter 1 "Mountain Meteorology, know before you go!" by Doug Armstrong & Chris Hill. An excellent book.

Other Weather Links

Unisys Weather is one of the best sources for weather graphics. they purchased the WXP system from the Purdue Weather Processor

The Airline Dispatchers Federation Weather Briefing Page - Fantastic list of Aviation Weather.

@dds - Aviation Digital Data Service, from NOAA, the winds forecast is an especially good resource as well as the forecast cloud cover and Satellite animations.

Open Directory - Recreation: Aviation: Soaring: Weather A user submitted list of sites.
WeatherBank Offers custom forecasting for a charge and other services free.
Winds and Temperatures Aloft (FD) from the National Weather Service

Buckeye Wx - Ohio State University.
Institute of Aviation Weather Server ... The Weather Visualizer - University of Illinois

FSU - Florida State University - weather data archive
Plymouth State College
WeatherNet: Long list of internet WeatherSites
UM Weather: WeatherSites
WWW Virtual Library - Meteorology
WeatherLabs
Dr. N-G's Web Weather Tool
College of DuPage... COD Main Sounding Page
Weather Calculator Unit conversions and other related stuff.
Pressure Conversions from Sutron. Other conversions and reference info.
Clouds and Storms
NOAA
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." Dan Quayle.

Soaring Weather - Shenandoah Valley
Northern Illinois / Southern Wisconsin Soaring Weather
Mid-Atlantic Region
Nighttime Lights of the World
Interactive Weather Information Network
Reno Soaring Forecast Just so you can drool about flying out over the Sierra Nevada mountains. And to see that you can get the National Weather Service to put a soaring forecast together.
Bay Area Soaring Associates Northern California WX.
San Diego Area Soaring Forecast with Winds Aloft
NWS Southern Region Weather & Climate links
National Weather Service Atlanta Peachtree City Georgia
John Wright See if the weather in the UK is ok.
www.weatherweb.net - from the UK
Glider Ground School - interactive internet Gliding lessons - of course weather is covered.

http://www.mountain-wave-project.de Mountain Wave Project with a experimental Wave-Forecast for Europe and information on record flights over the Andes.
Morning Glory Surfing a mile high, 1000 km wave of Northern Australia. "If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." Dan Quayle

Soaring Weather Related Programs
NEW! Hey this it New and Great: Soarcast from Kilo Delta Software, I am very pleased with my test, and encourage you to try it as well. This software can use a variety of sources for soundings, including Forecast soundings from FSL. Look for "soarcast_install.exe" on the Soaring Server

Metstation software from Tim Scott's Met and Gliding Home Page

instraob.exe 15 June 98.[this version is out of date and we await and update] Raob plotting program for Microsoft Windows, Version 1.05 by: Jim Bobo (321 kbytes) FREE Download - however you must pull your data from WeatherBank.
www.raob.com sells a Rawinsonde & Radiosonde SkewT Analysis Program, seems good, but I have not used it myself yet, hope to soon. Interestingly I have been told that it is now capable of prediciting Mountain Wave lift too.

Microsoft TerraServer - Its not exactly weather, but it might show you where you are going to fly. This site offers high resolution Satellite and Aerial Photography. A great resouce, one of my favorite sites.

A weather related poem that I wrote some years ago.

SES homepage ... Plan your own Record & Badge Tasks to be flown at SES.

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UTC=Eastern Standard Time (EST) +5, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) +4 . . . "The gods too are fond of a joke." - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Credits: Sam Zimmerman, Richard Kellerman, Walter Rogers, Greg Chisholm, "The Good Tim" (Larsen), Dennis Eckert, Jack Glendening, Jim Davis © 2000 Southern Eagles Soaring . . All data and images are © their respective sources. ..thanks to Futurama for Bender! . . . url=http://www.southerneaglessoaring.com/storms.html "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research." - Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Comments & Suggestions are Welcome: E-mail Chris Ruf (greeneggsandham@att.net)
Last modified 20-Nov-2006 22:33

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