This is the fourth video in a series of tutorials showing how to use the Forecast Model Animator page on the AccuWeather.com Professional web site. In this video I discuss how to change the settings on Model Animator.

First, I go to the settings section of the page by clicking on the word “Settings” about halfway down on the left side bar. The first item at the top of the page is the setting for the maximum number of loops that can be loaded into the page. This can be adjusted from one to 20. When this number of loops is exceeded, the top loop gets deleted to make room for the new one.

The next item is the settings for scaling images to fit on the page. By default, this is set to only do this when using the multi-panel view. If this is changed to “Always”, then any images larger than the available space on the page will be scaled down to fit. A future tutorial will discuss the multi-panel view.

The third item in the settings section controls how long to pause on the first and last frames in each loop when the animation is playing. You can enter a number of seconds in the boxes, or use the “+” and “-“ buttons to adjust the numbers.

About halfway down the page, there are settings for what to do when numbers are clicked and double-clicked. The default setting for clicking on a number is to temporarily disable the animation. This can be changed so that clicking on a number will open the corresponding image in a new window, remove the image from the animation, or do nothing. These same options can also be set for when a number is double-clicked. The default setting for double-clicking is to open the image in a new window (or tab, depending on browser settings).

Next, there are check-boxes for lining up the forecast hours by valid time. By default, these are checked so that models with different initialization times will be shifted to align forecast hours that have the same valid time. For example, the 12-hour forecast from a model initialized at 00z will appear above or below the 0-hour forecast from a model initialized at 12z.

The last setting on the page is a check-box that controls whether a pop-up alert appears when you exit the page. If this is checked and you have data loaded on the page, a pop-up dialog box will appear if you use the back, forward, or reload buttons in your browser. It is easy to click these buttons by mistake, which would make all of the data on the page disappear. When this alert is selected, you have a chance to stay on the page and keep the data that is loaded.

At the bottom of the page is a large blue “Save Settings” button. Clicking this button will save the settings to a browser cookie so that the page will “remember” them the next time you use it.

We will be posting another tutorial video soon where I will discuss how to use meteogram and skew-t charts in the Animator page.

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