Where can I find a surface map for the Feb 1st winter storm? I am teaching a United States Power Squadron Weather Class in the Pamlico Sail & Power Squadron in Washington, North Carolina and am not a meterologist. We have recommended the WRAL-TV Weather Site to our students who are serious boaters. I also have another question. What is "long range radiation"? My answer to the students was infrared.

MIKE MOSS SAYS: George, A good place to find surface analyses for past events in a user-friendly form is at an archive site maintained by the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center. You can access the archive at

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/sfc_archive.shtml

Also, a number of other details about that storm are covered in a summary posted by our local NWS office at

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/20070201/

Regarding the second part of your question, I believe you may be thinking of "longWAVE" radiation rather than "long range." As a generalization, we often refer to the main components of incoming solar radiation during the daytime as dominated by shortwave radiation (consisting of UV, visible and infrared wavelengths of 5 microns or less), which is largely responsible for daytime heating of the surface, and then to longwave radiation (infrared wavelengths greater than 5 microns) being the dominant emission from the surface as a means of releasing energy and cooling down. During the daytime, the incoming shortwave radiant energy absorbed and converted to heat at the surface exceeds the energy being lost via longwave radiation, so the ground heats up (assuming no significant advection of colder air into the region behind a front, etc) while at night the incoming shortwave radiation is absent, but the ground continues to release energy via longwave emissions, and so it cools off.