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Every weather map you have ever seen on the news is built from thousands of tiny diagrams called station models. Each one packs a full weather observation — temperature, moisture, pressure, sky, and wind — into a space about the size of a postage stamp. This is Lab 1 of 3 in the meteorology unit. Learn to read the station model here and the next two labs on air masses and fronts become far easier.
Tap a card to reveal its meaning. Only one card stays open at a time and each closes automatically after 8 seconds. Open any card as many times as you need.
Choose the correct term for each description. 1 point each
A station model is a solution to a crowding problem. A surface analysis chart may plot observations from more than a thousand reporting stations at once, and each station reports at least seven separate quantities. Writing them out in words would bury the map in text, so meteorologists agreed on a fixed spatial code: every measurement always occupies the same position relative to a small circle. Once you learn the positions, you read a station model the way you read a clock face, without hunting for labels.
The circle at the center reports cloud cover, shaded in eighths. An empty circle is a clear sky; a fully blackened circle is overcast. Immediately to the left of the circle sits the present weather symbol — two dots for rain, a six-pointed star for snow, three horizontal lines for fog.
Air temperature in degrees Fahrenheit is plotted at the upper left, and dew point, also in Fahrenheit, sits directly beneath it at the lower left. Keeping the two moisture-related numbers stacked is deliberate: the vertical gap between them is the single most useful quantity on the model. When temperature and dew point converge, the air is approaching saturation and relative humidity is climbing toward 100 percent; when they diverge, the air is drying out.
Barometric pressure occupies the upper right, written as a three-digit code rather than a full value. Sea-level pressure almost never falls outside the range 950 to 1050 millibars, so the leading digits and the decimal point are predictable and therefore omitted. To decode, apply one rule: if the code begins with 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, place a 9 in front; if it begins with 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4, place 10 in front. Then insert a decimal point before the final digit. The code 018 becomes 10018, which reads as 1001.8 mb; the code 984 becomes 9984, which reads as 998.4 mb. Two traps live in this rule. First, the decimal always goes before the last digit, so 018 is 1001.8 and never 1018.0. Second, 984 looks like a bigger number than 018 but decodes to the lower pressure. Both traps appear on the Regents exam almost every year.
Finally, the wind staff extends outward from the circle and points toward the direction the wind is blowing from. A staff extending toward the upper left indicates a northwest wind. Speed is read from the barbs at the far end of the staff: a half barb is 5 knots, a full barb is 10 knots, and a solid triangular flag is 50 knots. Add them together.
1. A station model reports a temperature of 55 °F and a dew point of 54 °F, so ______________________________________ .
2. The pressure code 987 looks larger than the code 021, but ______________________________________ .
These two responses are graded by Mr. Brownteacher graded
Tap the words in order to rebuild the sentence. Correct words turn green. 1 point
Change any setting and watch the station model redraw. Use it to test yourself: predict what the model will look like before you change a value.
Decode each station model below. Write pressure in millibars and wind direction as a compass direction. 4 points for a completed table
| Model | Air Temp (°F) | Dew Point (°F) | Pressure (mb) | Cloud Cover | Wind From | Wind Speed (kt) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | ||||||
| B | ||||||
| D | ||||||
| E |
5 questions are drawn at random from a bank of 20. You need 60% or higher to reach mastery. If you fall short you may retry with a fresh set.
Attempt 1
Press the button below to build a printable report with your ID number, your grade, your data table, your graphs and diagrams, and every question with your answer. Choose Save as PDF as the destination, then submit the PDF to Mr. Brown.