Backcountry weather average resources?

[Edward Barton]

What resources are people using for finding average weather for backcountry destinations? I’m familiar with averages tied to cities and towns, but not for the backcountry.

[Anonymous]

The park rangers at RMNP showed me they use a section of the NOAA website that lets them enter in peaks or lat/longs for weather.

I’ve also had surprising success calling weather stations in an area directly. I don’t think they get a ton of calls but the guys I talked too were really excited that someone called them and wanted to hear them talk about weather… They were explaining to me all the things…

Ranger stations are worth calling to confirm the weather you’ve already read.

Usually when I’ve checked weather from multiple sources atleast one of the sources disagrees with the others. I go with whatever the consensus opinion is or the one who sounds the most convincing on the phone.

[Stephen M]

I asked the same question 3-4 years ago and Pmags gave me a site that uses area names, I had it in my Bpl watch kist but lost it after the “upgrade” (or is it downgrade)

Might be worth  shooting Mags a pm.

[Alex H]

Edward, are you asking for long term weather averages for planning purposes or pinpoint forecasts?

The NOAA site has the best pinpoint forecasts as you can drill down and zoom in and click on the area map on the page exactly where you want to be.

If you scroll down you can usually find “local climatology” which will lead you to long term data.

If you use Caltopo you can right click any place on a map and get the pinpoint NOAA forecast that way too.

[Stephen M]

That’s the one Alex, thanks

[Dean F.]

Also here, for precipitation and snowpack. Gives a few days forward forecast as well.

[Brad Rogers]

I agree with the NOAA for pinpoint forecasts that are generally pretty good, and was unaware of the Caltopo tie in – very cool.

I read that you are looking long term for forecasts but perhaps I read that wrong. I do t have a perfect system but I use historical averages for the closest town (accuweather has daily highs and lows) and adjust for elevation at about 3.3*f per 1000ft. That gives me a decent idea on what to plan for until close to the trip when more accurate forecasts come out.

[Billy Ray]

The Weather Underground app will give you hour by hour forecasts… but I’ve never seen that at NOAA…

billy

[Edward Barton]

Brad, Yes that’s also what I’ve been doing, and I am looking for longterm averages.

At weather.gov, there are some additional resources:

A map of how they expect temps to diverge from normal over the next three months – http://w2.weather.gov/climate/l3mto.php

A map with links to various climate data, including monthly summaries and averages, but for a limited number of weather stations

– http://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php

 

 

There’s more to this site, I’ll report back if I explore it further.

[Mitchell Ebbott]

For long-range planning (looking at averages) weatherspark.com has useful tools. IIRC you can search by coordinates to get precise results.

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