Entire Earth Wind Map

I came across this awesome resource from someone on youtube. It's a wind map for the entire planet.

http://earth.nullschool.net/

Here's the video from the guy I found it from. He explains the map a bit right at the beginning after a few sec talk about satellites until about 1:30ish. Very neat stuff!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEl7Wlj9GwI

Interesting... "a visualization of global weather conditions, forecast by supercomputers, updated every three hours"

...the kind of thing you could sit and watch for hours

I found this, from the About screen, helpful. Because I'd assumed, from just looking at it, that the smaller number I clicked on (10hPa) was closer to the surface, but that's not the case (The various altitudes were mentioned in the video, but, not knowing a hectopascal from a hugelkulture, it didn't sink in)...Hectopascal being a measure of pressure, and pressure being higher at the surface....

1000 hPa | ~100 m, surface conditions
850 hPa | ~1,500 m, planetary boundary, low
700 hPa | ~3,500 m, planetary boundary, high
500 hPa | ~5,000 m, vorticity
250 hPa | ~10,500 m, jet stream
70 hPa | ~17,500 m, stratosphere
10 hPa | ~26,500 m, even more stratosphere

I also find this a fun site to play with when weather gets interesting - I use it to give a quick visual of aurora possibilties under 'space'.