Weather Calcmaster

Weather Calcmaster performs calculations of basic weather variables and stability indices. All of these calculations can be performed on sets of data that are entered into the program or pasted into the program. Weather Calcmaster also provides links to various forms of meteorological, climatological, and astronomical information on the Internet. A complete list of the specific features is given below.

• Regular Calculations: Weather Calcmaster performs a variety of calculations used in everyday meteorology. It is able to calcuate cooling, heating, and growing degree days, the dew point, the heat index, the mixing ratio, the relative humidity, the theta-e, and the wind chill index. In addition, Weather Calcmaster performs unit conversions between units of energy, precipitation amount/height, pressure, temperature, and wind speed.

• Stability Calculations: Weather Calcmaster performs a variety of calculations of stability indices used in meteorology. It is able to calculate the boundary layer energy potential, the Craven significant severe parameter, the energy-helicity index, the K index, the lifted index, the showalter index, the significant hail parameter, the significant tornado parameter, the supercell composite parameter, the severe weather threat index, the total totals, the vertically integrated liquid density, the vertically integrated liquid value of the day, and the wind index.

• Calculations on Sets of Data: A distinguishing feature of Weather Calcmaster is its ability to perform the above regular and stability calculations on sets of data. Users can enter a complete set of data or copy data from another program (e.g., a spreadsheet), and have Weather Calcmaster perform the requested calculation on the entire set of entered data. Users can then copy the results and paste them into another program (e.g., a spreadsheet).

• Weather Links: Weather Calcmaster includes links to meteorological, astronomical, and climatological data on the Internet under an "Internet" menu within the program. Clicking on a link starts your default web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.), which then goes to the specific website. Weather Calcmaster is user friendly in this process--it does not alter web browser settings.

• User's Guide: Weather Calcmaster contains a user's guide that not only describes how the program works, but also provides reference material on the various calculations performed by the program, model output statistics, the Beaufort scale, the Fujita tornado scale, hail measurement, and the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. This user's guide is not meant to be a comprehensive discussion of the theory behind the various variables. The reference section provides a list of sources that were used in order to construct Weather Calcmaster, and they can be consulted for further discussion. The user's guide comes in both web (HTML) and .pdf formats. The web version is linked to within the program under the "Help" menu, so users have easy access to it. An Internet connection is not required either, since the web version is located within Weather Calcmaster's directory. The .pdf format requires a .pdf reader such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view it.

• Update Check: Weather Calcmaster has the ability to check djburnette.com for updates to the program. If an update is found, then the user is presented with links to details about the new version and to download the updated version.

• UTC Clock: Since meteorology uses Coordinated Universal Time (otherwise known as Zulu Time or Z-Time), Weather Calcmaster includes a UTC Clock in its status bar.

• Microsoft .NET Framework Notice: Weather Calcmaster uses Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. If the .NET Framework is not installed, then setup will automatically download it and install it for you. Do note though that the download size exceeds 16 MB (compressed), which could take some time on slower Internet connections.

Last Update: 3 February 2007