Weather & Temperature

Understanding Systems

Mountain Thunderstorms - Their Formation and some Field-Forecasting Guidelines by Jim Bishop is a short read and will help you understand how a storm is building. Practical Mountain Weather by John Papineau gets into more detail into how weather forms in the mountains, including wind patterns etc. Mountain Weather by John Renner similarly has a large section on how weather in mountains generally works, and is then followed by regional examples in North America.

It's highly recommended to have a basic understanding of how weather works - on longer trips you can't rely on forecasts. Similar to reading the mountain, not just maps, it helps to be able to read the sky.

Forecasts

From the group: "I use weather.gov along with Mountain forecast for summits. Weather.gov let’s you click specific locations anywhere on the map so the key is to find the area and then make sure your point of reference is at a close enough elevation."

"The map can be a bit squirrely to zoom on to exactly where you want (a familiarity with maps and topographic features helps a lot), but it is the best."

"+1 to this. I usually google "weather gov [area e.g. hoover wilderness]. From there I go to the map and click on a point that is close to the elevation that I need. The text under the map will tell you the elevation of the point forecast."

"+1 for weather.gov. The others just repackage the data from that source. The part I find the most valuable from the .gov site is the Forecast Discussion (different from the Detailed Forecast) that goes on for full paragraphs and is not usually replicated in the other apps. There is a mobile version but it's not an app per se (so it's not in the app store). You can go to the site and then get the mobile version on your phone."

Windy has a nice map view of thunderstorm predictions fairly far out. Obviously accuracy at the tail end will be somewhat low, but it can be useful to visualize where a storm is coming from and maybe flip a loop to be low when it hits the worst, or be on the west if it's coming from the east or vice versa.

"Mountain forecast seems to always forecast colder which is fine by me as you should be layering anyway at altitude. I believe the rangers in eastern Sierra have told me they look at the NOAA. I check them all usually"

Open Summit has a great UI in their dedicated mobile apps - detailed two day forecasts for free, five day forecasts for $20 a month. Seems great for peakbagging, of less use for longer backpacking trips, but if you're already subscribed to Open Snow why not?