What site do you favor for weather watching?

I believe it was Linda J who introduced me to www.wunderground.com when I first arrived on island, and as I've mentioned before, I've since become a paid member of the site. The Weather Underground ("wunderground" has) a tropical weather section that includes the NOAA advisories, discussions (which are posted within minutes after they are released), tracking maps, path predictions with potential strike zones and probabilities, forecast models for every storm (Atlantic and Pacific). You can set a cookie to display the NWS seven day forecast plus a ton of other local info for the areas you designate. And there's also a TS weather blog by former NOAA/NHC/Navy meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters that gives his take on the Atlantic storm season, plus an active "virtual chatroom" (read: not used in the typical manner blog comment area) in which other weather watchers make 24/7 info from a variety of official weather sites and their own predictions (some PFA2** and others based on a ton of real time data). Sadly, the blog has recently (the the last week) by some idiots and trolls who come just to start fights--a lot of folks are working to reclaim the site for the truly interested. (Oh and there's a very handy guide to weather terminology that can help greatly with making sense of some of the weather geek speak you run across.)

Paid members also get to avoid seeing any ads on the site for one year. are provided their on blog space, a private intra-site message/email system, space to upload your weather photos, and more than I can recall right now. (I pay primarily to hide the ads.) Membership is a whopping $5 per year.

And for the tv watchers out there: after finding this site, I discovered that the Weather Channel was far, far more pathetic in providing good info than my already low opinion of them. It was painful to see that one of the first mentions of TS Chris info the day the storm began to threaten the Caribbean was around 5pm Tuesday, after we and most of the other northern leeward islands had already been under a TS warning. That's some Tropical Update service they offer every hour -- HAH! Dr. Masters and the comment area crowd had been tracking Chris when he was first developing as a wave called L99.

Sorry to sound like a commercial, but I am hooked -- it's the first thing I read every day of the hurricane season(before heading here, that is!). Thank you, Linda J.

--HC the windy

**PFA2: information Pulled From the Air which, should it actually come true, is Pretty Freakin' Amazing. Terminology learned when working on the Governor's Budget while employed at the Michigan Department of Management and Budget, circa 1990.

Thanks for the recommendation HC, and I appreciate the details about the various places to look on the site and how to avoid the advertising!

As the guy in charge of storm preparedness for the hotel, I look at and compare both NOAA and WeatherUnderground. They are both good. They are both much more accurate than the Weather Channel.

www.stormcarib.com is another excellent site esp. if you want to find out what's happening on the other islands.
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/ is another good one

My favorites are:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
National Hurricane Center / Tropical Prediction Center
I rarely need to look beyond this site. I usually look at the text advisory, the "Warnings and 3-Day Cone," and the "Wind Speed Probability Table." I signed up for their automatic daily Tropical Weather Outlook email, and they send more frequent emails when there's an active storm.

http://stormcarib.com/
Caribbean Hurricane Network
I occasionally look here at the current satellite weather image

http://www.ih2000.net/ira/bmt-wth.htm
GOLDEN TRIANGLE WEATHER PAGE
Contains info from many sources, for those who must see it all

When there's a storm, the most important thing is to keep watching the updates. Don't plan for today based on last night's forecast, because it changes. Look at the current forecast, and update your plan.