Introduction

PMWU-AO (Atmospheric Overhaul) completely overhauls the atmosphere storms spawn in, and how they behave.

Weather Soundings

Using 295 real-life atmospheric events sourced across the United States, PMW now pulls sounding data from each event and injects it directly into a fully restructured Skew-T/Hodograph system, overhauling the Sounding Viewer, Balloon Platform, and Weather Balloon blocks and items. Every hour of the day is correlated to one of the 295 base soundings, bringing the total to 7,080 unique soundings in PMWU-AO! When a "NONE" day is selected, the sounding system reverts back to the default PMW state and background weather system.

Outlooks

Convective outlooks have been overhauled with a new 7-day system. Each season carries its own percentage-based odds of categorical upgrades on any given day, so Spring has a 30% chance of a Day 1 categorical risk upgrade while Winter sits at just 5%. Fire weather and winter weather event days are also woven into the outlook sequence.

Storm Mechanic Changes

Storms now spawn during windows anchored to their original sounding time, opening 2 hours before and closing 1 hour after, so a 4pm sounding allows storms to spawn anywhere from 2pm to 5pm. Skies will generally remain clear before the window opens, with a cumulus field gradually building as it approaches. Supercells will also develop without precipitation initially, not producing rainfall until they reach Stage 1.

Tornado Behavior Changes

Tornadoes now last longer than in traditional PMW and feature cyclic behavior. When a tornado dissipates, it has a chance to re-form from its parent storm a few minutes later. Each cycle takes 2 to 5 minutes by default, though this is configurable in the PMWU-AO configuration folder. Tornado strength and width are now also dependent on sounding data.

Storm Behavior Changes

Storms now fall into one of six classification types: LP1, LP2, Classic1, Classic2, HP1, and HP2. LP1 produces the least precipitation beneath the base and mesocyclone, while HP2 results in a fully rain-wrapped tornado. Each classification is directly tied to the sounding generated for that hour, and storms can morph between types over their lifetime.

Fire Weather Changes

Fire weather now uses three risk categories — Elevated, Critical, and Extremely Critical — determined by surface humidity and wind values pulled from PMWU-AO soundings. On non-fire event days, wildfires will gradually smolder until extinguished, while spread rates scale with the active risk category. Fire weather risk days are limited to April through September.

Winter Weather Changes

Winter weather now uses three risk categories — Winter Storm, Blizzard, and Ice Storm — each with low-end to high-end intensity ranges. Precipitation can begin up to 6 hours before the peak sounding and taper off up to 6 hours after, with a gradual ramp-up leading into the peak and a wind-down through the end of the event. Winter weather risk days are limited to October through March.

Extended Time

Users can enable extended time, stretching day and night cycles to 3x or 6x their normal vanilla length. Sunrise and sunset times also shift with the seasons, as shown in the image below.

Day/Night Cycle Times

Commands

Requirements

• ProtoManly's Weather

Config Interferences

Some configuration options from PMW directly affect PMWU-AO features, here is a full list of what options affect PMWU-AO.

Support

Support for all PMWU mods are available within the PMWU Support Discord server.

Extra

This mod is apart of the PMWU modline, which was created to add multiple addon mods to ProtoManly's Weather. All PMWU mods are compatible with each other, but they have not been tested for compatability with other PMW sidemods.

This mod has been vigorously tested, but bugs may still appear. If you encounter a bug, please submit it to the PMWU Support Discord server in a ticket.

Skew-T Information

Hodograph Information