Yes, the soundings we get from Brissy HQ only have a condensed list of indices, whereas if you get the one straight from Wyoming (only because Brissy is down) you get a whole gammit of indices - a whole page of numbers and abbreviations and quite interesting actually - but I was looking for code STM (storm motion) but none of the sounding indices for Oz have that on the sounding - wind indices are an added thing on US Skew-ts.
They give two sets of numbers, the direction the storm(s) are heading or likely to head and the speed in knots (ie: 175/30) 175 being SSE at 30kts. There's no actual skew-t chart given, but lots of listed figures - i thought that perhaps the abbr 'DRCT deg' would be the wind direction as none of the figures go past 360 degrees for the Met compass which they would use. Also they have an abbr of 'SKNT knot' which i presume is 'speed in knots' for wind? Most of the wind speeds are from 0 to 39 which seem to me to be about right considering past Skew-t graphs i've seen of late for Darwin.
Now i've just gotten a sounding with it....now HGHT is obviously distance in metres.....(looking, looking...)...upper level max at 16600m is 32kts and with a DRCT number of 90 which equates to 32/90 and comparing that to the Skew-T and we have - whala! - wind barb facing east with the right amount of barbs and to confirm 500mb area....0/9 - barb is north at 9 kts.
Phew! Now those reading this have to remember that I did not have a Skew-T plot until later to confirm the wind barbs, so this is a running lesson for myself with just figures.
As you can see that's why I was after the storm motion wind direction - but thinking that our storms are driven by the mid levels then that's perhaps where i should look. (long winded but I've just educated myself...)
Mike
