NOAA/ERSL PSD AND CIRES-CU Maps. Question for weather nerds.

NOAA ^ | 2/16/16 | Rebelbase

[Rebelbase]

I've googled and googled and cannot find an answer to this question.

Joe Bastardi regularly refers to CIRES maps in his Saturday Summaries. The maps show geographic boundary divisions within each state that look like Counties but are not.

Does anyone know what these boundary divisions represent? Some sort of geographic climate designation?

Thank-you for your consideration!

[Rebelbase]

It's driving me crazy trying to figure this out.

[NowApproachingMidnight]

My first thought is that they ARE in fact counties: Clusters of counties.

[Sacajaweau]

Map says Precipitation

[Sacajaweau]

Says precipitation....maybe watersheds

[Rebelbase]

Looking at my state I see lines running though counties.

[Conan the Librarian]

Here Ya go!

https://cires.colorado.edu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Institute_for_Research_in_Environmental_Sciences

[onona]

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

It's at University of Colorado at Boulder

[Conan the Librarian]

This:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.help.html

Shows how they divide climate divisions.

I KNOW it’s not counties, cuz, I am in Georgia and we have 159 counties. The map only shows 9 divisions in Georgia.

[onona]

http://cires.colorado.edu/

[PIF]

You might need to consider using some other search engine than leftwing google - first try result below.

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
devoted to research and teaching in the wide-ranging disciplines of the environmental sciences.

cires.colorado.edu

[capt. norm]

Each cluster of counties is served by a weather station.

For example, I live in Bay County, Florida. Our nearest full weather station is TLH (Tallahassee)

They put out forecasts for the entire CWA (County Watch Area) broken down into local forecast for each city/county area.

[Rebelbase]

That helps some but it doesn’t mention any parameters that define the geographic divisions. I would think each geographic division within each state would have a name.

[stormer]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/maps/us-climate-divisions.php

[Rebelbase]

Excellent! Thank-you very much.

[Rebelbase]

Thanks again. It all makes sense now. NC, my home state is divided into eight regions. Northern and southern mountains, northern, central and southern piedmont and northern, central and southern coastal plain.