"Pivotal Weather" model(s) data as appled to topographic areas

[jrad]

I just shot a comment/complaint(a bitter one)/request to "Pivotal Weather" which is THE weather forecasting site for ALL models out there (GFS, European, Canadian, Ensembles ... all of them!). Everybody relies on Pivotal Weather for understanding all the various major weather models. What could be more important for Sierra adventures?

PROBLEM: The Pivotal Weather forecasts are shown on maps that ONLY display political boundaries. There are ZERO topo features on Pivotal Weather mappings of any of the major weather models. I told them their forecasting was thus nearly worthless for getting specific forecasts to specific topo areas because trying to figure out what part of a county bounded area, say, pertained to a specific topographic area, was very tedious to figure out especially if one was interested in many topographic areas.

I am planning a trip to areas east of Courtright Reservoir. The Pivotal Weather map below is almost utterly useless for figuring out where the European Model says there likely will be snow this weekend:

Screenshot - 8_29_2023 , 8_05_21 AM.png

Tiny and hard-to-use Pivotal Weather map for Sunday Sept 3, 2pm. Where IS that snow forecasted for???


SUGGESTIONS: I asked that Pivotal Weather website add SOME features to their poltical-only boundaries to help people apply their forecasts directly to areas of interest.

EXISTING TOOLS: of course, NOAA provides interpolated (maximum 6-day) forecasts based on GFS models that are very specific to very exact square-mile delimited areas ... but this nice service provides no mapping ... it's all charted (slowly) only on graphs, 2 days at a time and one square section at a time - TEDIOUS but great if that's all you need to know, your trip exists only in the very near future, believe the GFS (US model) more than the European or other models.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.p ... eadDay.y=7

Screenshot - 8_29_2023 , 8_24_49 AM.png

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY: I just today found that Google Maps (not Caltopo, not Google Earth, not regular Google Maps - everybody does a terrible job of it compared to this) displays county boundaries very nicely with major topo features (e.g., major lakes) shown ...... IF you type in the name of the county wherein you may travel, such as, in my case: "fresno county". You usually type a specific spot but in this case, Google Maps has entire political areas mapped, which is great. But you have to ask specifically for the county area.

Google Maps results for ... fresno county ... .png

When entering "Fresno County" into Google Maps search box! Finally, something I can use!

That helps.

Some day, maybe, Pivotal Weather will bother to add other useful features beside the very abstracted political boundaries.