Observations of Jetstream: Surface Maps

With a little knowledge of geography, you can observe the jet stream on a surface map too! The circled station (click on the map to see details) is from the Mount Washington observatory high atop the mountain about 1.5 miles above sea-level. Whereas winds are calm almost everywhere in New Hampshire, a steady westerly breeze of 25 knots (a little more than 25 mph) is blowing here. You can see a current surface plot of this map here.

Observations of jet stream: Satellite Imagery

This high resolution visible satellite imagery of VT and HM shows the sun going down at the end of today. It confirms oue obervations of clouds being moved from west to east by the mid-latitude westerlies. A stratocumulus cloud mass (meteorologists sometimes call it a "blob of cloud" for obvious reasons) passes over the Northeast Kingdom of stratocumulus late in the day.

You can see current high resolution visible satellite imagery of New England at the Meteorology Department's Satellite page.

Observations of jet stream: WebCams

LSC Webcam imagery for Monday, 8 Sept 2008. Click here for current animation.

The LSC webcam is in the staff room on the 4th floor of the Vail Building looking southeastward over the campus in summer and eastward towards Burke Mountain in the winter. It's a good way of watching clouds develop, storms pass, and the day go by. You can guess at which direction the jet stream is moving too.

The clouds seen in this video are generally stratocumulus clouds: sometimes they look like puffy cottonballs (cumulus clouds), and sometimes they flatten out into a flat cover (a stratus deck). It looks like they are low, maybe a mile or two above the surface.

Note that even though the wind was relatively calm all day on the ground, they are moving at a good clip due to a strong westerly jet stream, pushing them towards the east. This is the norm in the middle latitudes. Winds usually increase with height in the lower 10 miles of the atmosphere due to the jet stream.