Invests now being shown at Weather Underground

[fci]

I was surprised today to see that under the Tropical Weather heading on Weather Underground; in addition to Tropical Depressions and Named Systems; they are now showing Invests.

They currently have:
"North Atlantic: Tropical Storm Chantal and Invest 99I listed" along with Tropical Storm Erick for the East Pacific and Typhoon Usagi for the Western Pacific.

That is quite a change and I am surprised to see them there. They started just yesterday with Invest 98I and had not done it until 98I.

[stormchazer]

Interesting. I guess it makes some sense with their weather blogs. They have a weather enthusiaist audience who can appreciate the implications of Invest and the information provided by the NHC and NRL when Invest are named.

[MiamiensisWx]

I have one question. INVEST classifications are a military byproduct, so I would think there are some security issues. These classifications are controlled by specific parties (TPC). Which agency would approve their release to the general audience? I thought these intensity classifications were not public in some situations.

[Chris_in_Tampa]

This is a quote from the NHC's ATCF coordinator, Chris Sisko, that was in response to a question I emailed him about something related:

Invests are generally, not always assigned by the duly appointed TC
Forecast Center; however, DOD (such as the Navy or Air Force) also has
the ability to assign an Invest, track it or update it. This is per
agreement in inter-agency Memorandums of Agreement or Understanding
(MOAs or MOUs) dating back close to a decade and routinely updated every
year at several inter-agency (DOC, DOD, DHS, etc) conferences and
working groups.

So in a nutshell, Invests are basically areas of interest controlled
by either primarily NWS or DOD or both depending upon their respective
need.

So it sounds like invests are mostly through the NWS.

They are publicly available to absolutely anyone, with no restrictions that I have ever seen. I have my site download the invest data and calculate how far a storm is to the nearest city, provide all the ATCF data, like pressure and wind speed, and all the model data. Tons of sites access that data and provide it to the public. From the ATCF NOTICE file:

FTP Access to ATCF data is now available from NCEP high-speed/high availablity public
ftp servers. This will provide public users with more reliable and faster access.
The new Anonymous ftp service for ATCF data is now available at "ftp.tpc.ncep.noaa.gov/atcf"

Take a look for yourself:
ftp://ftp.tpc.ncep.noaa.gov/atcf/

Here's 99L:
ftp://ftp.tpc.ncep.noaa.gov/atcf/tcweb/ ... 007.invest

[chadtm80]

They saw us putting Invests up on our homepage and followed suit

[LSU2001]

They saw us putting Invests up on our homepage and followed suit

I think you are dead on Chad,
Great job by the way on the new look and format.
Tim