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Originally Posted by johngwheeler
I like "Clear Outside" (clearoutside.com). There is also a good free mobile app for it.
yr.no is a Norwegian weather site that uses European weather satellites (that also cover Australia!), and gives good hour-by-hour cloud cover figures.
Accuweather.com has a view specifically for Astronomy, but only has an average figure of cloud cover for the night, and can be a bit hit and miss.
Weatherzone.com is also a site that has cloud cover figures for 3-hour slots.
In reality none of them are 100% accurate and I have had a couple of frustrating nights where is was supposed to completely clear and was in fact quite cloudy. As you know, conditions on the East Coast of Australia can change very quickly, so I guess it's a challenge.
You might also look at the Bureau of Meteorology's own web site (bom.gov.au) and look at the cloud radars. They have visible and IR views, which is handy for nighttime.
HTH,
John.
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I encourage everybody to check it out Cloud Free Night, and understand what differentiates it from other sites. From our description on
CFN:
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It is unique in offering a comparison of the widely available forecasts from the United States GFS global model with higher resolution forecasts from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology ACCESS model.
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Your reference to YR.NO though is important. This is the only free service where you can get cloud forecasts for Australian locations based on the European Centre (ECMWF) forecast model (not "satellites"). There are very few even paid options for amateurs to access EC model data.
As I explained at my talk at CWAS Astrofest in Parkes and elsewhere, low clouds especially are very chaotic/dynamic so no weather model is going to get them right, but by looking at highest resolution BoM ACCESS-R model on CloudFreeNight and comparing it quickly and easily to United States GFS forecast (and YR.NO) you'll have the best information you can get.
Looking at another 50 sites that all use freely available US GFS model data is as Marc says fairly pointless, but if you like the way they present the information then don't let me stop you
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Phil