Topic: CAPE soundings/wind shear

[Mike]

 ???

I thought i'd start a new topic if anyone wants to help me out and all those others with where to go to find out wind shear speed and direction in their area if storms are immenant.

I've looked at the sounding chart for Darwin which I get from a website in the USA who provide the link for BOM.  Now, because it's in black and white and not colour it's difficult to know which line in the graph means which - as in a 'yellow line for this and a red line for that.'  Is the temp of ascending air line the wind shear?  What am i looking for!!!!!!

Where can I go (as for Darwin) to look at the wind sheer direction and speed?  Also when looking at the sounding there's icon flags that i think mean wind speed on the rh side margin, so what do they represent?

Hope you all can help.

[Michael Bath]

Try getting the soundings from this site:
http://soundings.bsch.au.com/index.html

You can pick past dates or the current ones, and also enter in your own values for temp/DP to replot the parcel line.

The icons on the right are the wind barbs which show wind speed and direction. Short barbs represent 5 knots, long barbs 10 knots, triangle barb is 50 knots. Add them all together to get total wind speed in knots.

[Mike]

Just on the topic of shear.  I've seen graphs with dots on them indicating shear at different levels and distances - how does one read those graphs - ie - the dots.?

Mike

[Michael Bath]

Hi Mike - can you please post an example of the graph you mean.

[Mike]

Finally found it.  it was in the forum discussion area but located it.

Here is the graph i was inquiring about.  I wanted to know how the dots are interpreted on the graph and what the scales are on the side and bottom.