Latest Update

February 27, 2026

I have let this site age badly. It was never supposed to be pretty, it was supposed to be useful. Well, this week I went through and worked on fixing everything that was broken.

One of the most useful sites that I like, and where all the links used to go, was MesoWest (University of Utah) where it seemed all the weather stations on the Internet were aggregated. Back when I flew commercially, we used this site extensively. In fact, I used it for other recreational activities when I traveled. I always went to the main page and never realized that the links below it on my weather page no longer worked. When I discovered the broken links, I noticed the planned sunsetting of MesoWest by 12/31/2026. I was sad. I liked that site, even if the UI was rather dated and clunky.

Well, there are a couple of options that I have played with. Some of the links on the list are now from the Weather.gov site managed by NOAA. Unfortunately, it only works within sites observed by the Western Region Headquarters (which is fine for all of Utah but not available if you wanted to fly in Tulsa, OK, for example). The other site is Synoptic Data that was recommended as an alternate to MesoWest. They have a much nicer UI and is almost perfect if it wasn’t for the lack of plus (+) and minus (-) buttons for zooming. Clearly, they designed it for touch screens but I despise having to zoom with a two-finger pinch because it only works for me on the third or fourth try. I tolerate it on my phone but for travel and ballooning I use a MacBook Air rather than an iPad because of my hatred of touch screens. (Rant over). Synoptic Data claims to be global and will work just fine if you travel outside Utah just like MesoWest did for me.

To use Synoptic Data, just go to their viewer in a web browser (https://viewer.synopticdate.com). If you click the link, you’ll go to the viewer’s main page which shows most of North America on a map and shows temperatures by default. The link that I created on my list on the home page is for a specific view of that map which shows Utah / Wind Speed / US Radar Composite / US Counties that you can check out here. I find putting in the county lines useful for navigating their map (that is if you know your Utah counties). The links below the Synoptic Data Viewer link on the my home page are for specific weather stations and gives you tabular data.

Lastly, I have added a link to Wind Line – Balloon Pilot Forecast. This is a new site to me and I have not played with it much so I’ll leave that for you to mess around with.

Thanks and safe landings!

Tom