Here’s the weather software behind West Lethbridge Weather, plus the best-known programs for weather hobbyists. Most were written by one dedicated person who loves the weather, and every one is worth knowing about if you’re curious about the sky.
Running a home weather station
Weather Display: the software behind our station
Every reading on this site, from the live temperature to the monthly climate report, is collected by Weather Display, written by Brian Hamilton in Waiuku, New Zealand. It talks to home weather stations from most of the big manufacturers, logs and graphs the data, builds reports, uploads to weather networks and websites, and can send weather data over APRS for ham radio operators. It runs on Windows, with Mac and Linux versions too.
Other station software
- Cumulus MX (Sandaysoft): a popular free program for many station brands.
- WeeWX: free, open-source software written in Python, a favourite for running a station from a small computer like a Raspberry Pi.
Making your own forecast
WXSIM: the forecast on this site
Our local forecast is made by WXSIM, written by Tom Ehrensperger. Instead of just copying a national forecast, it simulates the atmosphere above one spot, our station, hour by hour, starting from the latest observations and computer model data. It can be tuned for local quirks, like our chinooks.
wxsim.com · See it in action on our 5-day forecast and how it scores on the Forecast Scorecard.
Weather maps and analysis
Digital Atmosphere and Weather Graphics (Tim Vasquez)
Tim Vasquez’s Digital Atmosphere draws professional weather maps from live data. His Weather Graphics site also has free printable maps, a weather symbols reference chart and excellent forecasting books. We have a whole page on it: Tim Vasquez’s Weather Graphics.
RAOB: reading the upper air
RAOB, from John Shewchuk’s Eosonde Research Services, analyzes weather-balloon soundings: the temperature, moisture and wind from the ground to the top of the atmosphere. It shows at a glance whether the air is stable or ready to build thunderstorms, where icing and turbulence are likely, and much more.
Radar
GRLevelX (Gibson Ridge Software)
Mike Gibson’s GRLevel3, GRLevel2 and GR2Analyst show raw U.S. NEXRAD radar data in far more detail than a phone app. Storm spotters use them to see rotation and hail inside storms. For us, the useful radar is Great Falls, Montana (KTFX), which looks north toward the border.
For Canadian radar, use Environment Canada’s free weather.gc.ca map, which combines the Strathmore and Schuler radars that cover us.
Weather-model data (GRIB files)
Computer forecast models share their numbers in a format called GRIB. Free viewers let you open them yourself:
- XyGrib (the successor to zyGrib): draws GRIB files as weather maps; popular with sailors and hams.
- Panoply, from NASA: a free viewer for many science data formats, including GRIB.
- ecCodes (ECMWF) and wgrib2 (NOAA): tools for tinkerers and programmers.
Environment Canada publishes its own models free as GRIB2 files. Our sister site VE6DOK explains how: GRIB weather files explained.
On your phone
Looking for weather apps instead? Lethbridge Weather has a guide to the best ones: Weather Apps.
Learn to forecast
Ready to use these tools for real? The free Forecaster Track on Lethbridge Weather teaches you to read station plots, draw isobars and fronts, read the upper air and the models, and make your own Lethbridge forecast, in Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced lessons.
Keep exploring
- S-band, C-band, X-band: why radars use different waves
- Build your own weather station, on Lethbridge Weather
- Weather School: free lessons from the atmosphere to forecasting