seasonmap

The field guide

Short, practical explainers on how forecasting actually works — written to make the tools on the map more useful. No fluff, no doom headlines, just the mechanics.

Soundings
How to read a skew-T sounding

The five things that carry the chart: the two traces, CAPE and the cap, inversions, the dendritic growth zone, and the hodograph.

Verification
How forecast verification works

What MAE, RMSE, and bias actually measure, why truth comes from analyses like RTMA, and the two traps that make scoreboards lie.

Models
A field guide to the weather models

GFS, Euro, HRRR, NBM, GEFS, and the AI generation — what each one is, where it shines, and which to trust for which job.

Global drivers
What is the MJO?

The eastward-moving tropical engine behind week-2 and week-3 forecast skill, and how to read the 8-phase diagram.