Here is a quickie on reading the weather maps and generating a forecast.
Wind Barbs Let's begin with the wind barb, a most non-intuitive symbol to read.
It looks like the tail of an arrow, and this imaginary arrow points in the direction the wind is blowing. Each full barb is worth 10 knots. Each half barb is 5 knots. A flag is 50 knots, you won't see too many flags in the Atlantic. Add up the half barbs, full barbs and flags to get the total wind speed.