OK, I’m a sucker for visual maps and this one is fantastic. Surface wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database was used to animate the wind patterns across North America (or at least the lower 48 of the USA). The still on the right doesn’t do justice to the data so you really need to click on the link below to watch the animation. When you get there, check out the gallery to view different days and different wind patterns.

http://hint.fm/wind/index.html

Having grown up in New York state and moved to Boston, we could always count on the New York weather showing up in Boston about a day later. Pretty clear why looking at the prevailing winds on the wind map. Not surprising that the weather in California is also west to east — but who knew the weather in the middle of the country was so exciting?