---
title: Weather Forecasting
description: Forecasting turns atmospheric science into predictions. You will learn reading charts and models, fronts and pressure systems, severe weather, and the tools amateurs and professionals use.
category: sciences
subcategory: earth-and-environmental-science
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/weather-forecasting
---

# Weather Forecasting

Forecasting turns atmospheric science into predictions. You will learn reading charts and models, fronts and pressure systems, severe weather, and the tools amateurs and professionals use.

## Available Resources

2 Books • 2 Courses

## Books

### 1. Weather Flying (Fifth Edition)

**Author:** Robert N. Buck, Robert O. Buck

A veteran airline captain's practical guide to judging weather for flight. It covers thunderstorm avoidance, icing, fronts, fog and low ceilings, reading briefings and forecast products, and the go/no-go judgement that forecasts alone cannot supply. The FAA handbook teaches the products, Buck teaches practitioner judgement, i.e. how pilots turn forecasts into decisions.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071799729?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** aviation-weather, flight-planning, thunderstorms, icing, pilot-decision-making

### 2. Modern Marine Weather (3rd Edition)

**Author:** David Burch

A sailor's forecasting manual. It combines traditional onboard skills (barometer trends, cloud and wind-shift reading, Buys Ballot's law) with interpreting surface analyses, 500 mb charts, GRIB model data and ocean forecasts to make tactical decisions at sea.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0914025589?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** marine-weather, sailing, weather-maps, grib-files, barometer

## Courses

### 1. SKYWARN Spotter Convective Basics

**Author:** NWS / UCAR COMET Program

The official NWS online storm-spotter course, about one hour, hosted on COMET MetEd. Through three scenarios it teaches field identification of convective storm features and hazards, personal safety, and how to report severe weather to the National Weather Service. Free registration required.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.meted.ucar.edu/spotter_training/convective/

**Tags:** storm-spotting, severe-weather, convective-storms, nws, weather-safety

### 2. METEO 3: Weather Revealed – Introductory Meteorology

**Author:** Steve Seman, Lee Grenci

Penn State's open 13-lesson course, licensed CC BY-NC-SA. It covers reading isoplethed weather maps, air masses and fronts, mid-latitude cyclones and severe storms. It ends with a lesson on how forecasts are made, computer-model error, ensembles and forecast uncertainty. A more rigorous second step after JetStream, including how models and ensembles work and where they fail.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://courses.ems.psu.edu/meteo3/

**Tags:** meteorology, weather-maps, fronts, mid-latitude-cyclones, forecast-models

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