Learn
the Sky.
Being planned: a meteorology school built into WX. From "what does 40% chance mean?" to professional-level forecasting, taught on the weather where you are, with the app's live maps as the classroom.
Six steps, every time, and every one goes through the real app.
On a quiet weather day, the lesson runs on a saved storm instead, so it always works.
Climb the atmosphere.
Five levels, each a layer higher. Start at the surface reading your own forecast. Finish at the jet stream, writing forecast discussions the way professional forecasters do, and trying to beat the models.
Every lesson will be open to anyone. A level will count as complete once most of it is answered correctly on two separate days.
From reading your app to forecasting like a professional.
A contest season, written forecast discussions and post-mortems on real storms.
Honest limits: it won't be a degree, and it won't qualify anyone for a federal meteorologist job, which needs accredited coursework. It will cover the same ground, on the weather outside.
Every chart can teach itself.
Turn on Explain and the Skew-T, the 500 mb map, the 250 mb jet chart and radar will label their own features, worked out from the data on screen, not canned text.
- Skew-T · the cloud base, CAPE, the warm nose, the snow-growth zone
- 500 mb · troughs, ridges, "air rises here"
- 250 mb · jet streaks and their quadrants
- Radar · the bright band, rotation, beam height
Commit to a call. Let the sky grade it.
Forecast a storm that already happened.
Open a past storm five days out. You'll only see the runs that existed then. Make a call, step forward a run, adjust. At the end: what actually fell, and how you did against every model.
Built from what WX already keeps: the storm archive, run-by-run playback and the measured totals from Past storms.
The weather picks the lesson.
Each new model run will be scanned at your places for one or two things worth learning, each linked to its lesson.
Touch the physics.
Small tools where you change one thing and watch what happens.
The best classroom
is the sky over
your house.
Learn the Sky is in the works. Until then, the maps and tools it will teach with are already in the app.
See the classroom: ModelsLearn the Sky is being planned; nothing on this page is built yet. Its yardsticks: the AMS statement on the bachelor's degree in atmospheric science, the US federal meteorologist standard (GS-1340), Penn State's online weather forecasting certificate, Roland Stull's Practical Meteorology and the WxChallenge contest. Pictures are illustrations: every number is made up.