Where can I get real time barometric pressure readings - Gulf Coast?

[Th1onein]

I have family living in the Gulf Coast region, although I am in the Northeast right now, on business. Does anyone know where I can get real time barometric pressure readings for this area?

[pscot]

1. Go to Weather Underground

and type in your zip. You'll get a list of local, citizen weather stations.

[Th1onein]

3. No, I need a map of barometer readings across the Gulf Coast.

I want to predict where the hurricane will hit.

[Xipe Totec]

5. Get serious

There's a hurricane tracking center that will put the results of armies of experts and scores of millions of dollars of equipment and analysis at your disposal:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov


http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT04/refresh/AL0407_PROB34_F120+gif/204026.gif

[karlrschneider]

17. I think the poster has some sort of idea that it's possible to draw a line

through or along the lowest isobars and assume that's where the storm will go. Too bad it ain't that easy. :eyes:

[Xipe Totec]

42. Why the ignorant are blissful

Inept individuals ooze confidence, study finds:


One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

The deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.


http://www.zenspider.com/RWD/Thoughts/Inept.html

[Th1onein]

29. YOU get serious, friend.

I was one of those fleeing Houston when Rita was forecast to hit that area. They didn't do a real good job of tracking that hurricane then, did they? They evacuated an area that wasn't even hit and left thousands of people on Houston's freeways, stuck in traffic and out of gas. I predicted then that Rita would not hit Houston, and I was right. I'm not going to listen to these weather clowns again. Hailing from the Gulf Coast of Texas, I've lived with hurricanes all of my life. My mother knew how to tell where they were going to hit, and I'm going to go with her advice: look for the lowest barometric pressure along the coastline and you have your target.

[ThomWV]

33. This would be laughable if it weren't so serious

You might as well toss a cat to see where a hurricane will make landfall as trust in your mother's intuition or rely on having lived in Texas as your guide.

Look for the lowest pressure indeed! The lowest pressure you will find anywhere in the vicinity of a Hurricane is in its eye. Hurricanes do not track toward low pressure - hurricanes are low pressure. Hurricanes move heat, and are pushed around by winds. If you want to try voodoo methods to find a storm's path (and bet your life on it) at least you should look for something meaningful like upper level winds or sea surface temperatures. There is something else you need to bone up on too - some serious higher mathematics.

[Th1onein]

35. You are mistaken.

I am fully aware of the information you are attempting to apprise me of. However, by the time we have a good prediction from the weather clowns, it's usually too late to get out of the area, without being trapped in the traffic. We have to have something else to rely on. This is what we rely on and it has served my family well.

[malaise]

38. We don't have that problem in Jamaica

The Dean is coming.

[Mutineer]

40. Good luck to you. Hunker down and get to high ground if you can.

Stay safe my friend.

[malaise]

45. Thanks

I'm cooking up a feast for tonight before we lose all these lovely crabs when the power departs.

[Subdivisions]

39. I've followed your CF adventures and if there's anyone on

this board who can figure out how to predict the path of a hurricane, it's you.

Don't take the ridicule too hard, dear.

[Th1onein]

41. My "CF adventures"!

That's a great way to describe them.

Thank you, Texas Explorer.

About Dean: I just need SOMETHING to use as an indicator so that my family can leave BEFORE everyone else does. You can't wait too long when you're down by Galveston. You're trapped if you leave too late; you run into all of the people from Houston, going North.

The last time, when Rita hit, half of my family went north, and got trapped (with infants in the cars, in some cases) in that horrible traffic jam on the evacuation route. The other half watched the barometer readings along the coast, and we went South, to Brownsville. We missed the nightmare of that traffic literally inching to the North, AND we were safe. Up until very late in the game, the weather channels were predicting that Rita was going to hit Houston, but the barometer readings along the Coast, in that case, told a different story. We made a good decision.

[Subdivisions]

44. Well, you'll probably be way to busy with your new adventures

to research hurricanes in any great fashion as you have with CF.

I look forward to seeing how you call this one. My advice, however, would be for you to convince your coastal family members to leave RIGHT NOW. Book them room(s) in someplace like Lockhart or San Marcos as everybody else will be more likely to look to Austin or San Antonio for cover.

Katrina proved how hard it is to predict where a hurricane will make landfall and if this one lands at Galveston (or elsewhere along the coast) as a Cat 5, it's going to mess some shit up and you're right, getting off Galveston, or out of anywhere in the greater Houston vicinity, is not easy in an evacuation.

[karlrschneider]

6. If you don't know how to find that information, you don't know enough to predict shit.

Try a Magic 8-ball.
:eyes:

[peacetalksforall]

12. Schneider: I would guess that you've never been caught away from home

when a hurricane is bearing down. Can you open up your imagination one little bit to understand? It's near panic time - because there is a physical impossibility and for some, a feeling of helplessness and a need to help yourself figure things out.

[karlrschneider]

13. Actually, I have. And there is no hurricane "bearing down" at this moment...

even the experts don't know where it will go. I'm a scientist and a commercial pilot since 1963 and I have no idea where it will go and the idea that someone could formulate any kind of prediction simply from a pattern of current atmospheric pressures is absurd.

Imagination isn't a useful tool to determine what one should do 5 days out from wherever this hurricane will end up.

[HeeBGBz]

19. Oh, it's bearing down on someone

Five days is not a lot of time when a potential Cat 5 freight train is rolling in your general direction. Imagination could save your life.

I'm a scientist and a commercial pilot since 1963 and I have no idea where it will go and the idea that someone could formulate any kind of prediction simply from a pattern of current atmospheric pressures is absurd.

Maybe you should strive to add compassion to your resume. Or empathy. Or maybe some tact?

The OP has every right to check pressure readings and estimate along with the rest of us. You have no idea what the OP wanted to do with this information and you just decided to pop in and be rude.
Good on ya. :sarcasm:

[karlrschneider]

20. Well, perhaps the OP will 'pop in' and explain to us neophytes exactly what useful

information vis a vis predictions might be gleaned from current atmospheric pressure gradients. Or maybe you can do that. Can you? Look, I'm not trying to piss off anybody here but when I see idiocy, I say so. And present company excepted of course, I see a LOT of idiocy around here.

[HeeBGBz]

22. Why? For your entertainment?

Good grief, the woman is worried about family. She's not starting a weather psychic hotline or opting to replace Jim Cantore. Why is it so your business? She just asked for information. You feel hellbent on deriding her. Just let the woman scan the barometer readings for her own personal reasons. I'm sure you have more important things you should be doing.

[karlrschneider]

25. If "she" (I have no idea what the gender of the poster is, nor do I care)

is concerned about 'family', formulating 'her' own prognostication from a map of contemporary pressures is hardly a sane way to determine a course of action, or the lack of it. If she is wrong, and somebody has taken her opinion based on outdated information and failed to make proper preparations based on bullshit, will you continue to support that kind of prognosis? Give me a fucking break.

[HeeBGBz]

27. So calling people idiots is your way of helping the situation

Great job! You've completed your mission. You've saved untold millions of lives. Shouldn't you be onto your next project? Don't you have a bat signal shining somewhere? You know, like a Circle K or something?

[Th1onein]

31. If you see so much idiocy here on DU, why don't you LEAVE?

Like I said before, I'm surprised you're still here.

[Subdivisions]

36. You know, the poster you are chiding for simply asking

for a barometric chart source is quite the scientist herself.

Did you know that the poster in whose "fancy" you are taking delight lost her son to Cystic Fibrosis? The study and research of his disease consumed her every moment that she wasn't physically caring for him. And, even after he died, when it would have been easy to just give in to the pain and give up, she kept soldiering on with her research.

Today, if I'm guessing correctly, the business that she is on in the north east probably has something to do with that research and with the fact that, after eleven long years, she finally discovered a new drug therapy for sufferers of CF.

In fact, the paper she wrote on her research was PUBLISHED. She has made herself an expert student of CF and has even superceded the research of others trying to find the answers she found on her own, without the vast resources or grants available to the profesionals.

Here are a couple of threads where she describes the experience, almost beside herself that she, a devoted and grieving mother, could find herself in a whole new world as a result of her tenacity:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5249206">My scientific paper has been accepted to a major med. journal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5644427">WOW! I can't believe this is happening to me.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5861919">I run a foundation; I just realized that tonight.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5916006">People are trying my drug without being in the trial.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5956439">I am totally lost in the scientific world

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=5978399">What would you do?

There's more but that about describes the journey of this person who went from being a caring mother to being a published researcher of the disease that took her son and now holds the patent on the most promising therapy to date for Cystic Fibrosis.

How does this explain her way of thinking when it comes to hurricane tracking prediction? I don't know but she sure as hell has caused a stir in the medical research world by trumping lots of scientists and all their money and resources to find a treatment for CF.

[peacetalksforall]

37. Please don't tell us which airlne you work for.

I admit that I should not have used the words 'bearing down'. I hope that is not a major issue in this discussion.

[Th1onein]

30. Ahhh! The ever rude karlrschneider! I'm surprised you're still

here on DU. Of course, leave it to you to be rude about the whole thing.

I take it your from the Gulf Coast, eh, Karl? Know everything about hurricanes, right?

Let's see.....my ability to search the web is directly correlated with my ability to predict where a hurricane will make landfall. Right? Isn't that what you're saying, karl? Hmmmm......maybe you should give this information to the weather clowns?

[HeeBGBz]

7. Here's the readings from the National Data Buoy Center

Some (not all) of the buoys have barometric pressure readings.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

Just click the area you want to check out.

[halobeam]

2. here's a link if you need it

http://www.wunderground.com/

[Th1onein]

8. thank you, but that site doesn't give barometer readings

I need to see what the barometer readings are along the Gulf Coast. That is the surest way to predict where the hurricane will hit.

[karlrschneider]

14. Actually those figures are completely useless for hurricane track prediction.

What the values are NOW have absolutely nothing to do with where the steering currents will be in 3 or 4 days.
:eyes:

[RL3AO]

16. It doesn't work that way.

[tkmorris]

18. Actually it is not the best way

You have to consider a great number of different factors to predict a hurricane's path, and even there there will be uncertainty involved because you are attempting to predict a FUTURE event, and all you can really measure with precision are events as they are right now.

If you still want the map though, try this one. http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/barometric-pressure/

The buoy link offered upthread is a good one as well, though the data is not mapped out in the fashion you wanted. It is there though if you are willing to slog through it.

If you want to know more about tropical storm analysis and get some excellent predictions I would go here: http://www.storm2k.org/wx/ . The tropical analysis forum is where the pro meteorologists hang out and offer the forecasts, and the talkin' tropics forum will offer a cornucopia of analysis and discussion for amateurs and pros alike.

[CreekDog]

24. You are limiting yourself to one variable, in weather prediction

There are many, many variables.

Besides, if it were that easy, the meteorologists would not be saying that they don't know precisely where the storm will go, which is what they are saying.

I wonder if the OP is thinking that the lowest pressure is where the eye of the storm is which is closest to the worst part of the storm?

[karlrschneider]

26. The lowest pressure actually IS the 'middle' of the storm but that's NOW.

It will be in a different place tomorrow, and Sunday and Monday, etc. My complaint was that anybody who thinks current conditions are any reliable indications of what will happen in 4 or 5 days is an idiot.

[CreekDog]

28. That's my complaint too

[Th1onein]

Duh, karl.

You think that I asked for a site that could give me barometric readings along the coast so that I could look at them once and tell my family to get the hell out of there today? I was born and raised on the Gulf Coast. Having lived with hurricanes all of my life, I think I know a little bit more than that.

With all their sophisticated gadgets, when Rita was headed for the Gulf Coast, the weather clowns predicted it would hit Houston and many people drove right into it, trying to flee Houston, and that's after the hours and hours on the evacuation routes. In that case, the barometric pressure was a direct hit on where that hurricane would make landfall. Maybe it was a "fluke," karl, but we on the Gulf Coast have learned to watch that one indicator very closely for a reason.

[HeeBGBz]

4. Which area of the gulf?

Here's the weather info for Biloxi.

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=30.40796661,-88.98751831

30.02 in / 1017 hPa (Steady)

Weather Underground is a pretty informative site. You can do a search on the area you want and find the barometric info there.

[Th1onein]

34. Down near Kemah and Seabrook

We're right on the bay. About fifteen minutes north of Galveston, TX

[msongs]

9. you could buy a them a barometer? nt

[Igel]

10. Here's a map that's updated hourly.

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/sfc2.shtml is page to get to the image, if the hi-res gif is too much. I believe the upper right number in any cluster gives the pressure.

[spindrifter]

11. Predicting where the hurricane will hit is far more complicated

than tracking barometric pressure. You also need to deal with wind shear and the temperature of the water in the Gulf.

[sailor65]

15. Try this, bud

http://aviationweather.gov/

It draws the same data I use for flight planning.

[Canuckistanian]

21. bud? n/t

[CreekDog]

23. Weather Underground, just put in the zip code

http://wunderground.com

Barometric pressure for the official station will be up top on that page, but far below, near the bottom of the page will show personal weather stations reporting from all over that area and most will have atmospheric pressure.

[Th1onein]

43. Thank you. Here's another one, if anyone is interested....

http://www.ih2000.net/ira/bmt-wth.htm

[DU GrovelBot]

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