EZTip - Static imagery initial time placement

When viewing the static weather imagery in EZWxBrief, you may notice that the time slider at the bottom starts at the very far left position or very far right position depending on the imagery being viewed. Here's what's going on and why there's a difference.

Given that the time slider is always rendered with time increasing from left to right, any imagery that is solely based in the recent past will start with the slider in the right-most position. This is so that when you visit that imagery collection it will render with the most recent image available in the collection. This includes imagery such as the surface analysis chart below. In this case, the latest (most recent) surface analysis available is valid at 12Z as shown by the yellow arrow. Moving this slider handle to the left will cause the imagery to move backward in time.

If the imagery collection is a forecast of some sort, then the time slider will start at the left-most position. This includes any forecast such as the prog charts as shown below. The first image is valid at 18Z so the slider handle is placed at this position. In this example, sliding the handle to the right will cause the imagery to move forward in time.

It is important to understand that when the slider is first positioned when you are viewing a forecast collection, you may notice that some of the initial imagery may be valid in the recent past. This is very normal behavior. This is because forecast models are run at intervals of one hour, six hours or even 12 hours. Because of this, some of the early forecast hours (including the model's analysis) may have valid times in the recent past since the new run of the model may not be issued for several more hours. Even so, it's good to see the trends of how the forecast is evolving over time.