Brady's ePortfolio

Physical Science 

MET 1010:  Introduction to Meteorology

Welcome to my first attempt at tracking a cold front!

Below you will find some pictures to click on.  These images (retrieved from Unysis and NOAA) are what I analyzed to determine where the cold front I was tracking was moving and when it passed over the Salt Lake International Airport.  Also below you will find a document that describes how I came to the following prediction:

Cold Front Passed between 0800Z - 0900Z on March 27, 2011 over Salt Lake International Airport (KSLC).

But how do I know this?  Click on the below Word document and pictures to find out.

Taking a moment to reflect...

Before taking this meteorology class I knew nothing about weather or cold fronts or any of this.  I remember reading the description of this project at the beginning of the semester and thinking to myself, "man how am I going to do that?!"  It seemed like the type of thing that would be too sophisticated to learn in just a couple of months.  Luckily for me that wasn't the case, and as I prepared for this project I began reviewing lots of different surface maps and meteograms.  The more I looked at them, the more sense they began to make.  It got to be to the point that I could just briefly take a look at a meteogram and determine if the conditions on the graphs were those of a passing cold front.  I learned that the biggest players in a passing cold front are air temperature, atmospheric pressure and the direction that the wind is blowing.  Other conditions like precipitation, cloud coverage, cloud height, visibility, etc. also play a role in determining when a cold front has passed.

This project turned out to be a real fun and engaging experience.  Who knew that I would be able to predict the passage of a cold front?  It sounds crazy to think that a college student could learn these skills in such a short time frame.  Even after I found and tracked the cold front that I did for this ePortfolio I find myself still frequenting the NAOO and Unisys websites to view current surface maps and meteograms respectively.  It's really fun to try and guess when a cold front will pass and then check back later on to see how close my guess was.  I have really enjoyed this learning experience.  This entire Meteorology class has really incited my appetite for knowledge about the weather around me.