Ryan Vandersmith

Ryan Vandersmith is an R&D software engineer with over 10 years of experience and a deep self-taught background in meteorology. He builds weather forecasting and analysis tools used by photographers, storm chasers, and researchers, including Mesoview (skychaser.mesoview.app), a cloud inversion forecast tool, a mountain wave visualization tool, and a stepwise CAPE/CIN contribution to SounderPy. Professionally, he worked on Caffeine.ai, an AI website builder, and led Motoko programming-language tooling, including a VS Code extension with more than 85,000 installs. He also has experience with cross-chain EVM integrations, developer-experience products, UX research, Rust research software at the University of Colorado Boulder, consulting, and public-sector software.

Mesoview ([skychaser.mesoview.app](https://skychaser.mesoview.app)) is a mobile-friendly interface for viewing Storm Prediction Center mesoanalysis products. It improves on the usability of the official website and has gained traction in the storm chasing community.

The interface supports stacked parameter panels (for example 500 mb heights alongside surface vorticity and 0-3 km MLCAPE), time navigation, and regional sectors.

A major update in April 2026 ([announcement](https://x.com/rvandersmith/status/2041603976441856365)) added:

- Dark mode
- All SPC mesoanalysis products
- WPC surface analysis
- Pivotal Weather model data
- Point soundings
- Shareable URLs for real-time and archived data

A modern, mobile-optimized interface for SPC mesoanalysis, used by storm chasers.