Weather at a glance
The most important information
More specific weather information can be found on the islands pages. Go to our Explorer page!
The Analysis
This analysis is made by the group of Michael Padua, the famous meteorologist from Naga City.
Michael Padua is known all over the Philippines for his outstanding website "Typhoon2000". This website is extremely useful when a typhoon develops and approaches the Philippines.
The original data comes from NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Click on the image to enlarge!
Weather Analysis
The pressure
This map shows the isobars. Isobars are lines that link points of same atmospheric pressure.
If the isobars (the lines) are far from each other, then you may expect only weak or even no wind.
But when the isobars are very near, then it gets windy.
Storms have nearly concentric isobars around the center. In the center you find an L for "Low Pressure". Often the direction of the forward movement is indicated by arrows.
Severe storms are also marked with a cone out from the center. This cone shows the probability zone, where the center of the storm will pass.
Lightning map
This map shows lightnings in the last 2 hours. New lightning strikes (within the last 20 minutes) are white. 2 hours old lightnings are dark red.
This map is provided by Blitzortung.org. In case of heavy thunderstorms in your region it is worth to go to the original map. Their map is auto-updating and shows lightning strikes almost in real-time. Typical delays are between 1 and 2 seconds.
About "Blitzortung.org"
"Blitzortung.org" is a lightning detection network for locating electromagnetic discharges in the atmosphere (lightning discharges) with VLF receivers based on the time of arrival (TOA) and time of group arrival (TOGA) method.
The network consists of more than 500 lightning receivers and some central processing servers. The sources of the signals we locate are in general lightning discharges. The abbreviation VLF (Very Low Frequency) refers to the frequency range of 3 to 30 kHz. The receiving stations approximately record one millisecond of each signal with a sampling rate of more than 500 kHz. With the help of GPS receivers, the arrival times of the signals are registered with microsecond precision and sent over the Internet to our central processing servers. Every data sentence contains the precise time of arrival of the received lightning discharge impulse ("sferic") and the exact geographic position of the receiver. With this information from several stations the exact positions of the discharges are computed.
