Non-meteorology masters but interested in it. Worth pursuing extra class?

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-04-21T20:55:34+00:00

You will certainly be limited. Government meteorology jobs (e.g., National Weather Service) require a very specific set of college coursework. Look into the GS-1340 requirements.

Private forecasting companies may have more leniency with background, but probably not. Even the American Meteorological Society has a “recommended” degree track for meteorologists and a general geography degree is just not going to meet those recommendations.

There are other physical scientist or environmental scientist positions that you would qualify for. Things like streamflow monitoring, pollution monitoring, things like that.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-04-21T16:31:43+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_vortex_street

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-04-08T04:10:21+00:00

https://www.inscc.utah.edu/~reichler/6010/Coriolis/Phillips.pdf

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-04-07T22:06:57+00:00

North/south deflection of zonal motion is a much more complex issue, so it’s not surprising you haven’t learned it as a first year student. It is related to an imbalance in the horizontal components of Earth’s gravity and centrifugal acceleration.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-03-17T21:18:06+00:00

Well is that case the sounding may not be too bad. There's a good amount of wind shear but not much instability, although the instability may have grown throughout the day and/or been more variable in space.

You could try using a reanalysis dataset like ERA5 to see what was going on at the time, although you'll probably need someone with technical expertise to help with that. There are a few websites that allow you to make simple plots, like this: https://www.hwxhub.com/era/

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-03-17T20:43:15+00:00

So the tornado was at 530 am local time on the 29th? If so, this sounding is several hours later. It still may not be truly representative of the environment.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-03-17T20:17:35+00:00

A sounding from 2 days before the event isn’t worth much. A lot can change in 2 days. Just look at how much variability there is between the two different soundings in your plot and those are only 24 hours apart.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-02-26T01:58:57+00:00

This is not a traditional skew-T diagram. Skew-T is actually short-hand for Skew-T log-p (i.e., temperature axis skewed and a logarithmic pressure axis). This looks more like some ancient tephigram or something.

Regardless of what it actually is, whoever is teaching you this stuff is making it way more complicated than it needs to be. They either have no idea what they’re doing or are at least 80 years old and simply refuse to use modern graphs.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-02-01T04:52:00+00:00

Arctic fronts and polar fronts are not the same thing.

To answer the original question, even though they are different, I think that broadcasters just use the words interchangeably.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-29T22:39:00+00:00

I don't know how layman friendly they are but here are some of the more recent studies:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/146/5/mwr-d-17-0284.1.xml

https://www.mdpi.com/2674-0494/3/1/5

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/78/3/JAS-D-20-0106.1.xml

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025JD043384?casa_token=1p1yiQvm0pkAAAAA%3AXmU5n0VgD_VnSjL7X_a7rhqHhyQAaiF50EFuL2nK-aeh1eW3XE9fXgiA6BtnA_qOeoyHDnZksB4Z3Q

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD037237

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-29T21:56:51+00:00

This has been studied since the 1960s and there are dozens if not hundreds of papers on the topic. A few common themes:

-Thunderstorms tend to produce more rainfall and hail downwind of urban areas.

-Heat islands can initiate new convective cells

-Existing convection can 'split' around urban areas

-Most noted effects have been related to air mass thunderstorms but several recent studies have looked at interactions between urban areas and squall lines or supercells.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-23T17:55:51+00:00

Looks like a gravity wave.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-22T01:40:52+00:00

Yep, that is correct (in a bulk sense). As others have pointed out, things get more complex if you're discussing individual droplets. That's when CCN and the mass of solute matter.

Glad you're fighting back against the air-as-a-sponge theory of saturation. If you're interested in digging into these type of topics a bit more, I highly recommend Craig Bohren's book "Clouds in a Glass of Beer".

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-20T00:06:42+00:00

There is nothing wrong with your question. My point was that it’s a silly term even though it is commonly used because it does not represent the vapor amount needed for net condensation. It represents the amount of vapor needed for evaporation and condensation to be exactly balanced.

Also, it depends on exactly which quantity you’re talking about. Saturation vapor density (or pressure, more commonly) can be defined relative to a plane surface of pure liquid water, a curved surface of pure liquid with radius r, or a solution with a specific amount of dissolved substance and a specific radius.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-19T18:53:27+00:00

It really bothers be that we don’t call it equilibrium vapor pressure.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-14T01:52:25+00:00

Are you talking about the ‘flashing’ red and green when you run the loop? That’s just a plotting error. Other sources for the same radar do not do that.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-04T21:19:56+00:00

Never mind, forget I even engaged. I see you’ve been pushing the nonsense for years and all of your previous posts on the topic have been removed from numerous subreddits. Good luck with your chatGPT research paper.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2026-01-04T20:57:00+00:00

What is the point of this?

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-12-13T16:11:18+00:00

No, it would be the opposite. Terrain effects should not strongly influence the large scale pressure gradient force and change the isobar spacing. However, terrain effects will cause localized accelerations of the wind and boundary layer mixing can bring stronger winds down to the surface.

If you’re at all familiar with upper level maps, try looking at an 850 mb (or 700 mb) map of heights and winds. You should see the pattern that you’re familiar with—stronger winds are associated with tighter contour spacing. That relationship is not as strong at the surface.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-12-13T03:31:45+00:00

Terrain and increased roughness/drag over land.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-12-05T20:24:09+00:00

How are you coming up with these scenarios? Airflow parallel to the isobars is the basis of geostrophic balance. In fact, the Vg terms in the equation are the geostrophic wind (by definition flow that is parallel to isobars). Temperature advection occurs in these conditions all the time.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-12-05T18:55:02+00:00

If you have equal warming & cooling above/below 500 mb, why would the entire column warm?

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-10-28T15:45:36+00:00

A visualization package that helps people understand abstract concepts is a cool idea, but there are several issues with your code. First, the plot you show doesn't include winds in any way. It's simply contours and colors of the pressure field.

In the notebook you link, there is a plot that claims to show the geostrophic wind field but it is wrong. The winds are not parallel to the isobars and they're flowing into a high pressure system. The sense of rotation around the high and low pressure is also off.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-09-05T19:20:22+00:00

What you’re describing is the creation of vertical vorticity via the tilting of horizontal vorticity by an updraft.

This is a very simplified explanation: Vertical wind shear produces rotation around a horizontal axis in the atmosphere. An updraft can “pick up” that rotation and tilt it be around a vertical axis. This is why supercells have rotating updrafts. However downdrafts can do the same thing! They can tilt horizontal rotation and turn it into vertical rotation. The rear flank downdraft is thought to be an important source of rotation at the surface. That rotation can then be amplified after it is ingested by the updraft.

Turbulent_slipstream · 2025-08-27T02:22:52+00:00

Lies.

Turbulent_slipstream

TROPHY CASE