Analysis & Tools

Climate/Weather

• National Weather Service forecast for Las Vegas
• National Weather Service forecast for Angel Peak
• Western Regional Climate Center weather station at Spring Mountain Youth Camp
• MesoWest Surface Weather Maps (Nevada) choose Network: All Networks
• CSU CIRA GOES satellite images
• University of Wyoming radiosondes
• NOAA NCEP weather forecast model guidance

Clark County Department of Air Quality (DAQ)

• Current ozone
• Joe Neal monitor
• NLVA upper air
• Visibility cameras

Forecasts

The FAST-LVOS intensives will be planned using the NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) long range weather forecasts together with O₃ and CO forecasts from the NOAA RAP-Chem and RAQMS models.

• NOAA NCEP GFS (University of Wyoming) (1°, 240 h)
• NOAA NESDIS RAQMS (1°, 96 h)
• NOAA ESRL GSD RAP-Chem (13 km, 48 h)

Note that the lower resolution, but longer forecast time RAQMS runs are used to initialize the higher resolution RAP-Chem runs.

The RAP-Chem and RAQMS models forecast total O₃ and CO on isobaric and isentropic surfaces, respectively. The 320 K RAQMS surface lies in the upper troposphere (> 7 km asl) and the 500 hPa RAP-Chem surface lies in the mid-troposphere (about 5-6 km asl). The 300 K and 700 hPa surfaces roughly correspond to about 3 km asl. Use the RAP-Chem "Domain 1" to show the entire model domain and "Domain 2" to show the western U.S.

We will keep abreast of wildfires using information from:

• National Interagency Fire Center
• InciWeb
• Calfire