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Thursday, March 28th, 2024 20:12 Z Mar. 28, 2024 20:12Z

Wind Data

Contents:
This page focuses mostly on satellite-derived wind data. For ocean conditions, such as marine weather, buoy data and ship reports, visit our Ocean Data page.

Upper Level Winds (including shear and steering currents)

Surface Wind Imagery

The following section contains imagery that has been created using remote sensing instruments on satellites. To learn more about how these satellites orbit, such as what an ascending and descending pass is, you can visit "Satellite Characteristics: Orbits and Swaths" from the Canadian government. For information about how to read a wind barb, such as that "wind barbs point in the direction 'from' which the wind is blowing", click here.

This section contains imagery that usually has wind barbs. See the section on "Satellite-Derived Intensity Estimate Techniques" for other types of products for surface wind.
A note about some of the sites above. Make sure you note the correct time the data was observed. Some times are simply when the image may have been created, such as the last time the system checked to see if info was available.
Note: On November 23rd, 2009 the QuikSCAT satellite stopped providing real time data due to an instrument failure. On August 19th, 2016 the ISS-RapidScat instrument onboard the International Space Station, which was an instrument quickly constructed to replace QuikSCAT, failed and its mission was later ended.

Satellite-Derived Intensity Estimate Techniques

This section has products that estimate surface wind speed using satellite-derived intensity estimates. Rather than our "Surface Wind Imagery" section with imagery that usually has wind barbs, this section generally has data that tries to estimate the maximum surface wind for current tropical cyclones.

Inland Wind Model

Page last modified on September 10, 2022