MOS Graphics Discontinued

Ted

The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
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iFlyNothing
One of my favorite forecast tools over the past more than a decade was the MOS graphics. You could find them here:

https://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/forecast/graphics/MAV/

@tonycondon had introduced me to these and I immediately loved them. For the kind of flying I do, where a short flight is 500 nm and I'm always crossing multiple states in a trip, often covering half the country or more, they were a fantastic tool. You could see probabilities for the entire country (and over the course of the day) of ceilings, thunderstorms, rain. The fidelity of the forecast was complimentary to others like prog charts, Skew-Ts, etc., but they really were helpful to decipher what the weather was going to do on a given day, especially a complex one.

What was also great was that they would go several days in advance. So when looking at the country I could get an idea of just how widespread the LIFR would be. The MOS graphics made it easy to tell on my last Cloud Nine trip that I should push the trip up a day and that would make my travel much easier. I'm honestly of another tool that I could use to have deciphered that as easily and quickly as with the MOS graphics.

I rarely came across anyone else who used these (although my wife liked them, too), and the graphics were old technology but worked great. Supposedly the text that turned into the graphics is still available, but by itself that doesn't help me in terms of the clear picture that the graphics gave me.

Does anyone else know of another source of these?

If these are truly gone for good, this has me sad.
 

That is interesting for sure, but the ceiling and visibility plots were more useful to me, especially with the ability to specifically pick the hours I wanted rather than watch an animation in its particular time without me being able to analyze what I need to analyze for my flight.

Cut his some slack.... he’s been thinking of something AND building a car And giving the kids tractor rides And saving lots of puppies And....

You forgot also out of the country. ;)
 
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