These maps can be found on their Daily Planet WWW server. Weather Maps for Meteorologists Plymouth State College uses the same data to create the kind of hourly weather maps that meteorologists and pilots are accustomed to using. These maps contain more information from the reporting stations along with data from radar stations. In this one, the weather reports from ground observing stations are shown in what meteorologists refer to as station model plots . The plots show information about temperature, pressure, dew point, cloud cover, wind speed and direction, and special weather conditions at each reporting station.
Contour lines represent the atmospheric pressure in another form.
These maps are similar to those found in many daily newspapers. All FOS data products are injected into the IDD at Alden Electronics. As this map from Purdue University shows, observations of conditions in the upper atmosphere are available in addition to surface weather measurements. In this case, a contouring routine from the Purdue WXP software package was used to display the height at which the atmospheric pressure is 500 millibars. These upper air data measurements are taken by balloon-borne instruments on a regular basis and are transmitted as part of the DDS and IDS product streams on the Family of Services.