Salt Lake City Weather Assessment to Support Amateur Astronomy - Dashboard

Instructions Urls Last Verified and Updated 4-23-2025. K. Fisher fisherka@ipns.com

I. Weather Forecasting

UTC Date-Time:

Local Sidereal Time:

William Browning Building Webcams Clear Sky Clock - Salt Lake City NOAA SLC 5-Day Weather Summary NWS SLC Two-Day Hourly Graphical Forecast NWS CONUS Cloud Cover Animated Chart SLC 14 Day Extended Jet Stream Position NWS Short Range Forecast Charts KSL Vortex MesoWest SLC CWA (Wind) WeatherSpark SLC Monthly Climate Summaries

II. Satellite Imagery

GOES Pacific West Coast Satellite GOES Canadian North Am. Satellite College DuPage CONUS Satellite GOES Northern Rockies GOES Southern Rockies GOES JPSS Arctic Composite Image (Infrared) GOES Full Disk - West

III. Moonrise-set and Sunrise-set, and Astronomical Twilight

Sunrise, Sunset and Astro-Twilight Times SLC Moonrise Moonset Times SLC Moon Phases USNO Bright Star Chart by RA

IV. Deep and Shallow Sky

Stellarium Online NASA Daily Moon Guide Set times of the Planets Tonight - SLC US Naval Obs. Rise and Set Times of Planets Calculator NASA Spot-the-Station - SLC ISS Overflights Sun Moon ISS, Hubble and Tiangong Transits NASA JPL Horizons Ephemeris Comet Observation Database (COBS) Heavens Above - Satellites Sky and Telescope Jupiter Moons Calculator Sky and Telescope Great Red Spot Calculator Sky and Telescope Mars Profiler Calculator

V. Air Quality - Pollution and Wildfire Affected Transparency

PurpleAir - Salt Lake City NWS HRRR CONUS Smoke Map NWS EKA Area Smoke Forecast Map Utah Wildfire Info Map UDOT Traffic Web Cam Portal

VI. Purpose and Background

A central nightly question for northern Utah amateur astronomers is "What is weather forecast tonight? How cloudy will it be?" The dashboard supports links primarily to authoritative government sources and reliable commercial sources to answer that question for northern Utah. Resources provided can be used to rapidly make screen clips to support nightly posts to northern Utah astronomy social media groups. This dashboard is duplicative of the many smart phone weather apps like Accuweather, The Weather Channel or Clear Outside. That is by design. I prefer to work from data closest to the original government source instead of information mediated by commercial providers. Additioanlly, general internet links are easier to gather weather data into a format suitable for social media posting.

VII. How to Use this SLC Weather Dashboard:

  1. Under Section I:Weather Forecasting, click from left-to-right the first five buttons. Make screen captures as needed.
  2. Under Section II:Satellite Imagery, click from left-to-right the first two buttons. Make screen captures as needed.
  3. Section I, the last item, and Section III, Moonrise, Local Sidereal Time, reports the current UTC time and local Salt Lake City LST. This information is useful for annotating social media posts with date and times.
  4. Sometimes for uncertain weather conditions, the National Short-term Forecast Maps under Section I, are useful to discuss the passage of front systems over multiple days.
  5. The NWS CONUS Cloud Cover Animated Chart is useful for discussing the timing of cloud fronts.
  6. The remaining sections and links provide additional useful information, e.g., during the summer time, wildfree smoke can compromise visibility but does not show up on traditional weather charts. Wildfire smoke is graphically forecast in Section V, Air Quality, resources.

VIII. Website Specific Notes:

  1. Users should feel free to download local copies of this html file and to modify the same without this author's consent. To promote this process, this document is covered by a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
  2. GOES Satellite Animations: At night, use the sandwich filter.
  3. Moon Phases: The Moon Phases display at TimeandDate dot com is used to identify those times during the calendar month in which the night sky is not washed out by moonlight - the "current dark sky window" - and those times of the month in which the night is compromised by bright moonlight - the "current bright sky window." Amateur astronomers typically do observing an imaging during a dark sky window. Planetary and lunar observing can be done during the bright sky window, although the advent of modern ultra-narrow band filters has enabled skilled amateurs to pursue DSO imaging without regard to the brightness of their local sky.
  4. Utah Dept. of Transportation Webcamera System: This link goes to the UDOT Webcam portal. Use requires creating a login account and list of webcams. The use process to complicated and time-consuming, and is beyond scope of this dashboard. The UDOT webcam system can infrequently be used to verify the current cloud conditions in Utah's remote West Desert.
  5. Heaven's Above: This satellite tracking website is best used as a mobile phone application. The website requires a login to particularize charts for a specific observing point.

IX. Acknowledgements:

  1. College DuPage Meterology Department.
  2. Danko, Attillia. Clear Sky Chart
  3. Dept. of Geology, University of Utah (William Browning Building Webcams)
  4. Heaven's Above
  5. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  6. KSL News (Vortex Doplar Radar Forecast)
  7. MesoWest
  8. Netweather (Jet Stream Position)
  9. NASA
  10. NOAA-National Weather Service
  11. Observatory Črni Vrh. (Comet Observation Database)
  12. PurpleAir
  13. Sky and Telescope
  14. Time and Date (Weather Forecast, Sunrise Sunset, Moonrise Moonset, Extended Forecast, Planet Positions).
  15. United States Naval Observatory
  16. University of Utah Geology Department (WBB Webcams)
  17. Utah Dept. of Transportation
  18. Utah Wildfire.com (A consortium of Utah State and Federal Fire Agencies).
  19. WeatherSpark
  20. Wojczyński, Bartosz and PTMA (Transit Finder)

X. Revision History:

  1. 2024-04-23. Updated url change for William Browning Building cameras.