Each country's website for their National Weather Service (including France) is available in a limited number of languages. This is one of the many reasons why I'm immensely grateful for these guys:
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my wonderful husband and son. One of them is a fellow meteorologist and fluent in French, can you guess which one? Hint: I'm pretty sure our son said the word 'radar' to us the other day.
In all seriousness, my husband as been a big help in translating information from the Meteo France website. I know there are many wonderful websites that provide world wide weather information but I personally prefer to look at information produced by national centers. Forecasters at national weather services tend to have a better understanding of the microclimates of the regions for which they forecast. They actually are living in the country where they forecast! Information gleaned from a world wide weather website is generally from a forecast compiled directly from a computer model(s). These forecasts are not quality controlled by a human forecaster. Even with the tremendous computing power used to run weather models, I really believe that the human input into a forecast is essential. There were multiple instances this past winter along the east coast of the United States where non-meteorologists were posting alarming images taken straight from a single model simulation. My husband and I received many emails, phone calls and texts about these images. None of the 'super storms' the single model simulations indicated came to fruition and it was a bit disturbing that people without meteorological training caused such alarm. All computer models of the atmosphere have biases and many times in single runs (models are run 4 times to as many as 24 times a day) produce really outlandish results for later in the forecast cycle (days 5 and on). It's important to get weather information from a trusted source like a national weather service, local/national news outlets and respected weather websites! For the United States, look for the following seals that indicate a rigorous approval process to achieve:
There is no seal or certification process available at this moment for blogs and amateur weather enthusiasts. The logos above will be found for broadcast meteorologists and weather consultants.
Alright, I'm going to take a step down from my little soap box and get back to how information about adverse weather is disseminated in Europe. As I mentioned above, Meteoalarm compiles adverse weather information for most European nations in a single easy to access website. Meteoalarm is a part of EUMETNET, which was established to provide a framework to share information across European national centers.
Flags from the 34 countries that participate in the Meteoalarm initiative along with a shaded map of Europe (where green, yellow, orange and red indicate a scale of increasing weather danger) are available on the Meteoalarm home page. By clicking on the country's flag or the map, you can get more information about the adverse weather expected. For today in the Alps de Haute Provence and the Alps Maritimes regions individuals should be on the lookout for thunderstorms, some of which could cause strong winds.
Click on the image to go to the Meteoalarm France page.
Information is also available for the next day's expected adverse weather by clicking on the 'tomorrow' tab underneath maps displayed on any page. Further information about weather conditions can be found by clicking on the Meteo France logo (this is where knowledge of French comes in handy!).
Click on this image to go to the Meteo France page.
This should get you started in your perusing of weather information for Europe! More posts this week will talk about what different weather warnings mean in France, the French radar network, European weather observations, the weather models that Meteo France uses and what the weather will be like this weekend in Normandy. As always, be weather aware!
