Checking the Weather

There's a storm again in the Philippines and stargazers are stuck indoors once more.

Now, astronomers are not meteorologists, but it pays to know the weather conditions of your area. Determining the weather in your observing site can help you plan ahead on your stargazing activities so you won't end up aiming your scopes at clouds, or spending fuel on a trip to a dark site.

Here are some sites you can use to check the weather condition:

[Note: Weather forecasting cannot produce a weather prediction that is 100%, it isn't possible.] 

WeatherSpark

 WeatherSpark is a new type of weather website, with interactive weather graphs that allow you to pan and zoom through the entire history of any weather station on earth. You can get multiple forecasts for the current location, overlaid on records and averages to put it all in context. WeatherSpark is currently making use of 4,000 weather stations.

I personally prefer this site because it is updated and fairly accurate.

Typhoon2000

Typhoon2000 is a website that provides tropical cyclone information over the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) and Northwest Pacific Basin. The website is updated every 6 hours during times of tropical cyclones.

 

And of course we have

PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration)