TV Forecasting in the Bay Area

If you go to my t-shirt shop, you’ll see a couple of shirts I made to represent San Francisco weather. My niece loves “The Horror! The Fog!”, because if you’re on the inland side of the coastal ranges, and you start to see the fog roll in, it can feel like a winter snow storm hitting on a summer day. San Francisco experiences heavy rains, thunderstorms, even snow on nearby mountaintops. During the summertime, forecasting high temperatures can be extremely difficult. You can forecast a high of 80 degrees, and the marine layer will move in, and your forecast high will be blown by 15 degrees! My friend Billy Poon, meteorologist at KPIX in San Francisco, helped me with this blog.

NWS Office San Francisco/Monterey Bay (I use this to check out the weather changes in the last 24 hours, surface pressure very important for forecasting shifts in winds. Wind shifts are not only important for marine forecasts in the Pacific and San Francisco Bay, but for fog forecasting as well.)

Weather Underground Bay Area Weather Sites (This map from Weather Underground shows all the personal weather stations available, much more than the local National Weather Service Office provides. Each station has a record of weather information.)

Unisys Weather Upper Air Models (Place I go to start on my 7-day forecast.)

GFS MOS Guidance (GFS MOS forecast guidance for temperatures around the Bay.)

NAM MOS Guidance (NAM MOS forecast guidance for temperatures.)

Raw FOUS Data (The FOUS… Billy uses this to check out the Relative Humidity at 3 levels, for Low, Mid & Highs clouds & rainfall over 60 hours.)

NWS San Francisco/Monterey Bay Weather Tables (This is a clickable map that will show 7-day model based weather forecast.)

Air Quality (Check the air quality for the day—big concern in the summertime.)

Airport Delays (Check for airport delays, especially San Francisco!)

Rainfall Forecast (Rainfall forecast broken down over 3 days, very fine detail. Billy says it’s a great tool during rainy season.)

California Department of Transportation – Road Conditions (Knowing the actual road conditions, can help you determine if you blew the rain/snow elevation on the roads leading up to Lake Tahoe!)

USGS Earthquake Map (And, of course in California, you will need this earthquake map from the USGS.)

Thanks Billy!

-Dawn Brown, Billy Poon, KPIX Meteorologist