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.

Built a cross-section visualization tool for studying terrain-driven mountain waves, used to analyze downslope wind events such as the December 2021 Marshall Fire windstorm and the 2025 Los Angeles area wildfires.

Examples:

- [Photo matching the RAP cross section for a Front Range mountain wave](https://x.com/rvandersmith/status/1873224459412459773)
- [Cloud iridescence near Boulder](https://bsky.app/profile/ryanvandersmith.com/post/3lk2ezd7rn22q)
- [Mountain-wave reanalysis during the Marshall Fire](https://bsky.app/profile/ryanvandersmith.com/post/3lejyxhaaik2p)
- [Overnight mountain-wave windstorm comparison](https://bsky.app/profile/ryanvandersmith.com/post/3ldogil2lrk24)
- [Arctic front interacting with a mountain wave](https://bsky.app/profile/ryanvandersmith.com/post/3lfyezyoowc2v)

A custom cross-section tool for analyzing mountain waves and downslope windstorms.

Mountain Wave Visualization