“Everybody loves talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it!” But with ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education (AEJEE), ESRI’s free, downloadable, dual platform (Win/Mac), lightweight GIS tool, you can map it. (This is a replay of a popular blog item from last spring.) Thanks to folks at NOAA, NWS, and PASDA (Pennsylvania State Data Access), it’s very easy to create and save a project that presents a “quick and dirty” view of the atmosphere.

Open an empty AEJEE map window, choose to add data from the Internet (as described in the Lesson 5 of the built-in AEJEE Tutorial), and navigate to the PASDA data portal (http://maps.pasda.psu.edu). Add the “Latest Infrared Satellite” for the bottom layer, add the “Latest Radar” for the top layer, and set the radar layer at 75% transparent. Save the project. Then, any time you re-open the project while connected to the Internet, you’ll see the latest conditions.

- Charlie Fitzpatrick, ESRI Education Manager