Best Way To Stay On Top Of Local Weather Forecasts

Many websites give you the same basic information. You'll have to choose which interface you like best.

The biggest difference in the sites is the amount of human input the forecasts have. Some sites are driven 100% by the computer models (which aren't always the most accurate). Other sites have a significant amount of human tweaking. You choose!

Weather.gov
For a quick forecast for any location in the United States, the National Weather Service site is probably among the best. Their forecasts are computer driven, but usually have a significant amount of human intervention. Go to this site and type your city and state into the little box in the upper left hand corner. Once you get your local forecast, bookmark that page!

AccuWeather.com
AccuWeather is the world's largest private forecast firm. They've been around for a long time. Their interface page is pretty cool. Again, type in your city/state or zip code and bookmark the page that comes up. You get computer generated hour by hour forecast, a video forecast from one of their meteorologists and some really nice graphics. Most of their data is computer generated, but there is some human tweeking which goes on here since AccuWeather's tv and newspaper forecasting service has clients all over the country. AccuWeather also offers a professional pay web site for the true weather junkie. It's worth the money if you are really, really into weather!

Weather.com
Ah, yes, The Weather Channel. They have everything you would expect them to have. The same idea, here. Type in your zip code and away you go. They, too, have video versions of the forecast for most cities. The video forecast, however, doesn't always seem to work very well in my computer. These local forecasts, like the ones you see on The Weather Channel, are very heavily computer driven with very little human insight.

Weather Underground
This is a pretty cool website which is generally easy to use and filled with nifty weather information. Like the others, you type your zip code in to get to your town's forecast. The downside here is that you get a computer forecast, little or no human intervention. I do like this site for the ease of access to historical weather data.

Hydrometeorological Prediction Center
OK, so you just want to look at weather maps and figure it out on your own. Here's a government site which has some decent surface maps which will give you a good idea of what is going on. This site has some pretty good links to other useful sites as well.

That ought to get you started. If you know of another good forecasting site, let me know. I'll include it in a future article.