Skew T/Log P charts

[rramblings]

Hi,

I have done a certain amount of reading on my own to learn meteorology because of my interest in aviation as a non-pilot aviation enthusiast. I am also interested in weather as affects wildfires. I have a couple of meteorology books at home including a book by Ahrens. Ahrens discusses Skew T/Log P charts but not in as much detail as I would like. My current interest in Skew T/Log P charts is because of my interest in the work of incident meteorologists aka IMETs who provide onsight weather support for wildfires. I saw this great video recently where the IMET launched a weather balloon with what I thought was a good description of the data provided by the weather balloon: weather balloon launch at Soberanes Fire (CA) . Now I have some sites that I have been referred to for an explanation of the skew T/Log P charts, e.g. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/upperair/skewt.html and I know about the NWS upper air sounding page and their help file: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/

And of course, Skew T/Log P chart are used here and I'd like to learn to be better at reading them as I follow along.

But, I thought I'd throw the question out here. Is there a simple explanation of this chart, including how to read or interpret what the chart is saying? Is this something that I have to spend time with and get familiar with. Do all Skew T/Log P charts use the same format, in the US and internationally? Any other websites asides from the ones that I have listed you'd recommend?

I do have an idea of the dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates mean. Although I admit that I have to keep referring to my Ahrens book (college level basic meteorology). Is there a good website somewhere that has a simple explanation that I could use with the Skew T/Log P charts because I know that both of these lapse rates figure into the Skew T/Log P charts.

I have some questions on weather balloons but I'll save those for later. And there is a ton of info and videos out there. For example, NWS Upton has some videos. Thanks in advance for your help

[Rainshadow]

Barbara,

I havent downloaded the program for real time use, but the BUFKIT program might do both, give you answers and show you real time information.

[rramblings]

Tony, thanks. I have heard of the BUFKIT program. I just checked a couple of sites regarding bufkit that I had bookmarked. I am under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that the BUFKIT program that I read about here is only available for the PC and perhaps for certain Linux installations. I read on a couple of other Wx forums that Mac folks are encouraged to run windows emulator in order to run BUFKIT. But I can check this out later, and perhaps I'll either find a way to run BUFKIT on my Mac or perhaps a web based version I can use.

In any event, thank-you Tony for taking the time to respond my question. I appreciate it.

Tyler

[tombo82685]

1 hour ago, rramblings said:

Tony, thanks. I have heard of the BUFKIT program. I just checked a couple of sites regarding bufkit that I had bookmarked. I am under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that the BUFKIT program that I read about here is only available for the PC and perhaps for certain Linux installations. I read on a couple of other Wx forums that Mac folks are encouraged to run windows emulator in order to run BUFKIT. But I can check this out later, and perhaps I'll either find a way to run BUFKIT on my Mac or perhaps a web based version I can use.

In any event, thank-you Tony for taking the time to respond my question. I appreciate it.

Tyler

I'm not to familiar with identifying Lapse rates on skew T's but I can show you how to identify temperatures and what not from it. 

[rramblings]

10 minutes ago, tombo82685 said:

I'm not to familiar with identifying Lapse rates on skew T's but I can show you how to identify temperatures and what not from it. 

Thanks Tombo, I'll take you up on this. But not now. Perhaps over the weekend or early next week after I have time to look at some of these charts again.