1. Reading a Station Model
from a Weather map

2. Cold Fronts & Warm Fronts

3. High and Low Pressure Systems
Blue "H" = High pressure
HAPPY weather - Usually calm, sunny
Red "L" = Low pressure
LOUSY weather - Can mean storminess

4. Air Temperature:
The number to the upper left of each station is the air temperature in degrees.
Fahrenheit (U.S. maps) or Celsius (Other countries)

5. Cloud Cover
OBSCURED:
Smog, smoke, haze, volcanic ash, dust, sand, sea spray, heavy rain (torrential), heavy snow (blizzard), or blowing snow.

6. Wind and Wind Direction
Wind is blowing from
Long barb = 10 knots
Short barb = 5 knot
= 50 knots

7. Dew Point
The number to the lower left of each station is the dew point temperature in degrees.
Fahrenheit (U.S. maps) or Celsius (Other countries).
The dew point is a measure of moisture.
It shows how much you'd have to cool the air to get a relative humidity of 100 percent.
The higher the dew point, the more water vapor there is for producing rain or snow.

8. Barometric Pressure
LOCATION: The number to the upper right of each station model is the
barometric pressure.
The typical sea-level pressure is a little bit more than 1000 millibars.

9. How to Read & Write the Barometric Pressure
The number has been compressed to fit the map by lopping off the first one or two digits (which are always a "10" or a "9") and omitting the decimal point before the last digit.
For example:
The code "085" would mean millibars.
The code “954” would mean millibars.
Steps:
Add the decimal point
2. Decide if you need to add a “10” or a “9”
• If the code starts with a 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 then add “10”
• If the code starts with a 6, 7, 8, 9 then add a “9”

10. Weather Conditions
The type of weather occurring at the time the observation is taken is written between the temperature and dew point. (Middle left-side)
In this case, fog was reported.