Classic rock songs like "California Dreamin'" and decades of Hollywood movies suggest that the western United States is a land free of weather, with blue skies and abundant sunshine. While this is probably true the majority of the time, the western states can bring tremendous forecast challenges to meteorologists. If there's a place in the world where weather is known for not going according to plan, this is it. This weather map depicts conditions in late afternoon in early November. Draw isobars every four millibars (996,1000,1004 millibars, etc.) using the plot model example at the lower right as a guide. As the plot model indicates, the actual millibar value for plotted pressure (xxx) is lOxx.x millibars when the number shown is below 500 and 9xx.x when it is more than 500. For instance, 027 represents 1002.7 millibars and 892 represents 989.2 millibars. Therefore, when one station reports 074 and a nearby one shows 086, the 1008-millibar isobar will be found halfway between the stations. Then try to find the locations of fronts, highs, and lows.
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